Rogue Angel 50: Celtic Fire (21 page)

Chapter 42

Her jaw still stung from the forearm and punch. The coppery taste of blood hung heavy on her tongue. She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted by that. She’d misjudged the woman even though she’d seen her behaving like a sword-wielding maniac once before. She shouldn’t have given her the chance to take her out; she should have just reached into the otherwhere for Joan’s sword and put an end to the whole thing right there and then.

But there had been an upside, too.

Awena had tipped her hand early, undoing her own lie. Roux wasn’t on the ferry at all.

And now Annja knew that, which meant she wasn’t about to throw herself between the closing doors and be cut off from the mainland right as things were racing to a head.

While it was still slow going back to the terminal and the ferry, it was basically open road heading the other way with all of the arrivals from the Emerald Isle long since dispersed into the Welsh countryside.

Annja laid a thick coating of rubber on the road as she peeled out of the lot. She was almost half a mile behind Awena, but thankfully there were no other roads until she hit the intersection at the exit ramp. But after that it was anyone’s guess as there were maybe a dozen possible intersections and side roads and crossroads that would eventually fan out all over Wales. It was imperative she catch the woman before she reached the intersection and those opportunities opened up for her.

Mercifully the only other car on this side of road was Awena’s beaten-up station wagon.

The road up ahead began to bend gradually. She closed the gap between them, more so because Awena seemed to be slowing down rather than accelerating into the corner. Annja was close enough to be able to read the decals on the bumper. Brake lights flared red. The station wagon slowed alarmingly. Annja didn’t understand what was happening until she saw the white-haired Roux bundle out of the car and hit the grass verge bone-jarringly hard.

Torn, Annja slammed on the brakes, knowing it meant the woman was getting away, but as she saw his bruised and bloody body come to rest she knew she had to stop. Awena was gone.

“Roux!” Annja yelled, two of the Porsche’s four wheels up on the verge and churning up dirt as she skidded to a halt. She scrambled out of the car and raced to his side. Horns blared at the suicidal maneuver, but were silenced at the sight of Annja helping an old man to his feet. He moved unsteadily, not saying anything until he was buckled into the passenger’s seat.

“What happened?”

Roux was clearly shaken as she helped him into the car. She fumbled in the bottom of her bag and found a tiny pair of nail scissors that were sufficient to free him from the plastic tie around his wrists. The damage was bad. She could see where the plastic had bitten into the tendon. It was going to be a slow, painful healing process. He looked gray and ashen. No sleep, little food. It hadn’t had a flattering effect on him. In fact, it was almost possible to forget he was a soldier and had been all of his incredibly long life.

He shook his head. “Nothing I didn’t intend. Get back into the car.”

“It’s too late. She’s gone. There are a dozen different routes she can take from here.”

“But only one will lead her to where she’s going.”

“Very zen, Roux, but not very helpful.”

He smiled. “There’s only one route where life is concerned, Annja. It’s a river. It flows from birth to death.”

“What are you rattling on about? Did she hit you on the head, Roux?”

That smile again. “I know exactly where she’s heading.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so?”

“I did.”

Annja gunned the engine and the Porsche roared to life. “So where to?”

“Back to Caernarfon.”

“The mantle isn’t there. She knows that, right?”

“Absolutely. But it’s not about the Treasures of Britain anymore. It never truly was. It was always about what they represented.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What did they represent?”

“Her birthright.”

“Again, a little more clarity. Some of us weren’t just locked up with a lunatic for twenty-four hours and don’t have the advantage of having them spill their fiendish plan to us, right before we escaped.”

“Her name is Awena Llewellyn. Her father was Owen Llewellyn.”

“Yes? And?”

“Llewellyn is an old name. It’s an old bloodline. It dates back all the way to the last true prince of Wales, Llewellyn the Last.”

“So, what, she’s related to this true prince?”

“Without a doubt. The sword is the clue, the way it reacts to her.”

“The flame?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask how that works. Is it some kind of trick?”

“Not really. Purely scientific, actually, if you understand the forces at play. I’ll explain it all, I promise, but now is not the time. Now we need to stop Awena Llewellyn from claiming what she sees as her birthright.”

“And how do we do that?”

“By preventing the murder of the Prince of Wales,” Roux said.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Llewellyn the Last was killed by the English when Wales was subdued. Her father, Owen Llewellyn, believed that the English should be forced out of Wales and control returned to the Welsh. She has inherited his...zeal. I don’t know if the treasures are magnifying what was always there, but I believe she intends to claim her birthright as heir of Llewellyn the Last.”

“Wow, she really has lost her mind.”

Roux shrugged. “Grief can undermine the strongest of us. Her father just died, and she believes he, like their ancestor, was murdered. These are thoughts she’s no doubt harbored since childhood when people kept telling her she was special, that she had the blood of Celtic kings flowing through her veins. And with the recent trauma coupled with the fact that her father’s death coincides with the recovery of not one but two of the lost treasures of her people...it’s not surprising she is fragile.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“I am nice, most of the time, Annja. Ask Garin. He’ll tell you what I can be like when I’m not being nice.” They had history, of course, the master and student, that extended to the fields of France and the shattering of Joan of Arc’s sword after the two men failed her. Something had happened back there that neither of them understood, though it didn’t really matter.

As long as those fragments of Joan’s sword remained scattered to the four winds they’d been immune to aging—that’s different to immortal, a very fine difference, but different. They could die, brutally and bloodily; they could succumb to poison and any other nefarious means but not time—the one thing that killed everything couldn’t touch them. And when it had become clear to Garin that Roux intended to reforge the sword and thus end the curse that kept them breathing, he’d done everything in his power to kill Roux. What existed between them now was an uneasy sort of truce. It wasn’t trust-based. They were two of a kind. And despite the fact several years had gone by since Annja had set that final piece of the blade in place reuniting Joan’s sword, neither of them appeared to have aged a day. So for the time being, at least, that was a fight they no longer needed to pursue relentlessly. That didn’t mean they entirely trusted each other, either.

“Most of us have black thoughts we allow to fester because we know they will never come to pass. But what happens when we’re suddenly in a position to bring them into reality? Do we suddenly discard them? Probably. But in the right set of circumstances perhaps we embrace them. Awena’s father is dead, murdered in her mind by you, but he brought her the sword. That was his sacrifice. It’s more than just a symbol. It is the last sword of power, and now she is wielding it, feeling it resonate to her touch, feeling it respond to her. She has started to understand the sword is more than just a weapon. It is a tool to bring about her destiny. It is the key to claiming her birthright.”

“All she has to do is kill the prince,” Annja said, finishing the thought for him.

She concentrated on her driving as they approached another junction, double-checking the sign to make sure she wasn’t on a road to nowhere. There was no sign of Awena’s station wagon on the road ahead, but Roux’s reasoning made sense.

As though reading her mind, Roux asked, “Where’s pretty boy, did you lose him?”

Annja had completely forgotten about Garin. “He’s probably halfway to Ireland by now,” she said.

“Do I want to ask?”

“He’s looking for you. Probably one trunk at a time in the hold of that ferry.”

“And neither of you wondered how she’d have been able to board and then just walk off the ferry without triggering some sort of alarm? We live in a world of terrorists, Annja. They don’t just let people on and off ferries these days, not when they could stow a car on board with a bomb in it.”

He was right, of course, but that didn’t make her feel any better. “Let’s just say I was more concerned about trying to find you than thinking of the logistics of how she spirited you away, okay?”

“Sometimes you have to think beyond what you’re seeing and hearing.”

“I know that.”

“Good, then we’ll say no more.”

Well, he didn’t need to. It was a long drive and it was all she could think of.

They would be back in Caernarfon in less than half an hour. She would call Garin then if he hadn’t been in touch.

“So,” Roux asked after a while, keeping his voice light. “There was nothing in the tower?”

So much had happened in less than a day, Annja had almost forgotten they hadn’t spoken about their failed attempts to find the Mantle of King Arthur.

“It looked as if the stones hadn’t been disturbed for a very long time,” she explained, not that it helped.

“I see.” Roux fell silent, just as he had done on the drive to St. Davids.

“But it wasn’t empty,” Annja said, opening the dashboard for the envelope she’d taken from the muslin sack and chamois leather wrap. She’d almost forgotten about it. She handed it across to him. “This was in the bottom.”

He took it off her and with a thumbnail broke the seal, pulling a single sheet of paper from inside.

“What is it?” Annja asked after a while.

“An explanation,” he said. She didn’t press him on the matter. The letter was clearly personal, no doubt from the woman he had entrusted the safekeeping of the treasure to. He would tell Annja more if he wanted to, in his own time. Roux slipped the piece of paper back into the envelope and returned it to the glove compartment. “You’re welcome to read it for yourself later, when I’m not around. All I ask is you don’t judge me.”

Which guaranteed she would read it, of course. Curiosity was like that; bait it well enough and it couldn’t be resisted. Annja wondered why he thought she’d judge him. What could he have done? What could be so bad about his falling out with the mystery woman?

“And the mantle?”

“Who knows? Destroyed perhaps? Given so few people are aware of it, it is unlikely to fall into the wrong hands at least. That is a small mercy.”

“And you still think that Awena will try to kill the prince?”

“She has nothing to lose and everything to gain in her mind, so yes. I do. Both of her parents are dead and her brother appears to want to have nothing to do with her as long as she is on the same fool’s quest that consumed their father.”

“But she could still go home, couldn’t she? It could still end happily ever after. If we could take the sword from her, she could just go home. She hasn’t gone beyond the point of no return. Right now, she can turn back. She doesn’t need to be punished. There can be a positive ending for her.”

“The woman is troubled, but she isn’t a monster,” he agreed. “The sword has done this to her. It has turned her into something she is not, just like I suspect it did to her father.”

“But she stole the whetstone before she came into contact with the sword. Something drove her to that.”

“Simple. The need to please her father. There’s no arcane magic behind that. How many children live to please their parents? How many want to do things that prove they are praiseworthy?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Annja said. “I never lived to please the nuns.” Which of course wasn’t true. There were plenty of occasions she’d done something or hadn’t done something because she believed it would please one of the holy sisters who cared for her in the orphanage.

Roux raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“The break-in was reckless, but no one was ever in any danger.”

“The same couldn’t be said for Owen Llewellyn.”

“Indeed,” Roux mused. “But I doubt he had ever hurt anyone until after he took possession of the sword.”

“It sounds like you almost feel sorry for her.”

“I do. But more importantly, I think there is time to save her. If she tries to kill the prince, though, then it can only end badly.”

“Save the prince, save the girl,” Annja said, paraphrasing a television show slogan. Even just thinking about television made her feel guilty. She needed to check in with Doug and tell him there was nothing doing with this whole Wales research-vacation trip. What a disaster! It had turned out to be nothing like the quiet, relaxing trip she’d planned. The frown on her face deepened when she thought about the armed soldiers guarding the castle gates.

That had been prior to the prince’s arrival. Security would be tighter than her expense account once he was in residence. If Awena tried anything, then the men who fired first and asked questions later would be already at the question stage before Annja had parked the car.

Awena might think that the sword had saved her when she fell from the upstairs window. That was the kind of delusion that went hand in hand with ancient treasures and quests for birthrights, but it was wrongheaded thinking. A sword couldn’t stop a hail of automatic gunfire—well, a normal sword couldn’t. Annja had turned aside a few bullets with Joan’s blade, but that was different, wasn’t it?

They had to find Awena first and do everything they could to stop her.

Chapter 43

“Thank you for your call. Your call is important to us. Please hold on while we wait for our operative to get his head out of every stinking trunk in every stinking car on this godforsaken ferry.”

“Sorry,” Annja said. Garin was in a foul temper.

“Just tell me how long you’ve known he’s safe?”

“Half an hour. Maybe.”

“And in all that time you didn’t think to call me? Meanwhile I’ve been cavity searched by security and hauled off to Guantanamo as suspicious dude number one.”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“Who says I’m exaggerating? I’ll be walking with a limp for a week.”

Annja couldn’t help it; she laughed. “Okay, look, I said I’m sorry.” They were back in the hotel and it was considerably longer than an hour that she’d known Roux was safe, but she wasn’t going to admit that. “Roux’s safe. That’s what counts. There was nothing you could have done.”

“Apart from avoid the strip search. What about the woman?”

“She gave us the slip.”

“So she still has the sword?”

“She still has the sword.”

“How is he?”

“Sore. Both of body and pride.”

“Ha! That won’t hurt him too much. So, any idea of where sword woman has gone?”

Annja glanced across to Roux before speaking. He nodded. “He’s made a pretty convincing argument for her being back in Caernarfon tomorrow.”

“Is being out of her tiny mind part of the argument?” Garin scoffed. She could hear him shaking his head. “Why would she ever go back there? The smart money’s on getting as far away as possible now that she knows the cloak of invisibility’s lost.” He paused a beat. “Unless she’s got another line of investigation... Does she know where it is?”

“Roux? You want to field that one?” Annja said.

“She won’t know where the mantle is,” he said confidently. “It’s gone. Off the table. Awena Llewellyn has no hidden knowledge about the Treasures of Britain, only what her father unearthed, and he never got as far as knowing who was watching the tower. Think it through—if she had known, she wouldn’t have been so adamant that Annja had the mantle.” That made sense.

“Okay, so what’s crazy lady’s next move?”

“She’s going to try to kill the Prince of Wales during his visit to the castle.”

“Uh, back up a second. I’m lost. Suddenly we’re not looking for some flaming sword but instead stopping an assassination? Why the hell would she go off the deep end like that?”

“Because Awena Llewellyn holds the English responsible for ancient wrongs done to her family,” Roux explained. “Suffice it to say, she believes that Llewellyn the Last was the last true prince of Wales and she is his heir.”

“Okay, so we’re definitely into the realm of crazy. Fine. I can handle that.”

“She’s not in her right mind,” Roux agreed. “Possession of the sword has changed her. The situation is this—we’ve got to stop her before she attempts to kill the prince. That’s our endgame. Fail and someone dies. I don’t need any more blood on my hands. How soon do you think you can get back here?”

“No problem, once I break out of Guantanamo, negotiate my freedom from the FBI watch lists and pray they let me back on the next ferry—that won’t be until dawn tomorrow. I could abandon my car and have the pilot bring the Gulfstream over to make the short hop if things are desperate. That being the case, probably five hours, give or take. Meaning the middle of the night. Oh, how I love night flying instead of sleeping.”

“Take your time,” Roux said. “I don’t think she’ll make her move tonight, so get here tomorrow, fresh.”

“Roger that, big guy.”

It was still only late afternoon. Roux wanted to take a walk through the town center to get his bearings. Preknowledge could be the difference here. It wasn’t that he expected or even hoped to encounter Awena. He just wanted local details. He wanted to know where she might run, where the procession would travel, where she could hide and where if she got that close she could make her move. The castle itself was always going to be tightly controlled, so what alternatives were open to her?

She wasn’t getting inside with a sword. That was obvious, unless she had some stupid idea about fighting through the cordon of soldiers defending the prince.

A few market stallholders were in the last throes of packing when she and Roux reached the square.

Two soldiers were once again on sentry duty. They kept a close eye on everything that was going on in the vicinity, but they’d become so much a part of the scenery over the past week, the stallholders were ignoring them.

As she and Roux strolled by a café, a waitress was clearing cups from one of the tables in the street, but she paused for a moment to give them a smile.

“Hi,” the girl said, clearly recognizing Roux. “Not got your friend with you today?”

“Sorry to disappoint you.” Roux offered a rueful smile. “He’s taking an unexpected day trip,” Roux replied. “He’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Just in time for the fun and games, eh?”

Annja had been so wrapped up in thoughts of Awena that she’d forgotten that this was a big deal for the town itself. She forgot how gung ho the Brits could be about their royal family.

“I hope so,” Roux said.

Annja knew that the girl was almost certainly thinking the same thing, but for a very different reason. Garin had that effect on women. Well, some of them, anyway. And this one in particular, obviously.

“Why don’t we grab a couple of coffees?” Annja suggested.

They sat at a table while the girl disappeared inside.

“She’s pretty,” Annja said as she sat down.

“Aren’t they always?”

“Well, yes, I’ll give you that. But she’s a bit young for Garin.”

“Every woman alive is too young for him,” Roux said. She saw the smile on his face, but there was no laughter in his voice. It wasn’t like Roux to be maudlin, but clearly the past was weighing on his mind. She wondered what was in that letter, what explanation could have affected his mood so badly. She’d do as he asked, and read the letter in good time, but not yet. If he wanted her to know what it said he’d have told her himself. She could wait.

The girl returned with two coffees, all smiling and happy with herself.

“Busy day tomorrow, then?” Annja asked.

“For everyone except the stallholders,” she said. “They aren’t happy, but they’ve been shut down until the visit’s over. Busiest day the town has seen for years and they can’t trade.”

“My heart bleeds for them,” Roux said wickedly, earning a grin from the girl.

“They want to bring the cars through the town this way,” she explained.

Annja cast her gaze up and down the cobbled street. So now they knew which route the cavalcade was going to take and the direction the cars would approach the castle from.

“You expecting a lot of people?”

“For sure. This place will be packed. I remember getting a day off school the last time there was a visit like this. We made flags and banners and stood at the side of the road to wave as the car went past. Him and Lady Di—God rest her soul—stopped outside the school and got out to say hello. She was lovely...I’ll always remember that.”

Annja wanted to interrupt the girl and ask which school she was talking about, but Roux was a step ahead. “So, you’re not part of the anti-English brigade, then?”

“Me? Oh, dear, no. I bleed red, white and blue on my mother’s side.” She offered a smile. “But I grew up speaking Welsh at home and chat to the regulars like that. I know there was a time when the English tried to stop all that, but that was ages ago. Things have changed a lot since my grandmother’s day. Besides, it’s no better having people in charge in Cardiff than it was when they were in London. People are people.”

No matter where in the world Annja went, there were always people who wanted things to be exactly as they had been once upon a time; no matter how far back in their history they had to look, there was always some mythical better day and age. For some people, change wasn’t always for the better.

Annja’s mind was racing. Security would be tight in the town square, most likely sweeping the prince straight into the castle. But if they had a scheduled meet-and-greet at an earlier point along the route, surely that was the time to make a move?

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking,” Roux asked when the girl had finally left them to their coffee.

“Do you think she’s so far gone that she would make her attempt to kill the prince in front of a load of schoolchildren?”

Roux nodded. “It’s the perfect place for it. People will be expected to step out of the crowds, kids will be curtsying and delivering bouquets of flowers. They’ll be cheering. So much noise, so many distractions. The problem is that if we go to the school to stop her and we’re wrong...” He didn’t have to say any more than that:
if they were wrong.

“So we have to ensure she makes her move where we want her to,” Annja said.

“And how do we make that happen?”

“I have an idea.”

“If anyone else had said that, I’d be worried. Because it’s you,” Roux said, “I’m terrified.” He was only partially joking.