King's Crusade (Seventeen) (34 page)

Footsteps sounded behind her and paused in the doorway. ‘I’m coming with you,’ said Jackson in a steadfast tone.

Alexa turned and studied the stubborn light blazing in his icy blue eyes. Her hands fisted at her sides.

She was still controlled by an all-consuming and somewhat irrational urge to keep Jackson as physically close as possible—especially since she had witnessed the blast that had devastated Reznak’s research facility. But she was also level-headed enough to see that the Harvard professor would be unable to contribute much to their current predicament.

‘Why?’ she finally asked.

He inhaled sharply. ‘Why? What the—’

‘You can’t fight as well as immortals,’ Alexa interrupted bluntly. ‘You’ll only get in our way if we have to protect you.’

Jackson looked like he was about to explode. He took a deep breath and stared at the floor. ‘Okay, I’ll admit that I’m not as strong or as fast or as deadly as you guys,’ he said bitterly. ‘But I’m
way
smarter than any of you. And you’re gonna need smarts in your dealings with Cavaleti’s sect.’

Alexa could not deny the truth of his words. Still, something inside was screaming at her to not let him get anywhere near the battlefield. ‘We have Eva,’ she said steadily.

Jackson’s expression darkened. He stormed inside the room and backed her against one of the cabinets. ‘Eva is a goddamned robot!’ he said between gritted teeth. ‘Granted, she’s clever, but you need human eyes on the ground and a brain that can analyze the enemy’s actions instantly!’

Alexa scowled. She grabbed his arms, spun him round, and slammed him against the wall. ‘I don’t want you there!’ she snarled.

His words of protest suddenly died on his lips. The anger in his eyes cleared. His irises turned cobalt blue. ‘Are you worried about me?’ he whispered.

She turned away.

He reached out and seized her arm in an iron grip. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ he said, his tone growing more confident.

Alexa closed her eyes briefly against the storm of emotions raging through her heart, whirled around, and kissed him savagely.

‘Don’t go,’ she finally murmured against his lips, her breathing ragged and her heart pounding against her ribs as she tasted his blood on her tongue.

She tried hard not to make her words sound like a plea.

The expression on his face made her shiver and sent a sharp ache stabbing through her.

‘I won’t leave you,’ said Jackson quietly.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

T
hey left the estate shortly
before two in the morning. As their vehicles ate away the miles to the airport outside Ceske Budejovice, Eva confirmed that the convoy of SUVs and vans that had attacked Reznak’s research facility had reached Prague.

Alexa was aware of Jackson’s eyes on her throughout most of the drive.

Reznak’s refueled Gulfstream jet lifted off the tarmac forty-five minutes after the Ilyushin Il-476 departed Ruzyne Airport. ‘Tom, do you think you can beat them to Perm?’ asked her godfather as he leaned in the doorway to the cockpit.

Fawkes studied the flight display before him with a cold expression. ‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ said Reznak. He walked back into the main cabin and stopped by Yonten’s seat. ‘How’re you holding up?’

The monk smiled and nodded once. The color had returned to his cheeks. Alexa suspected this had more to do with the biscuits Marie had given him than the painkillers the older woman had forced down his throat before they left the chateau.

Reznak turned to her. ‘Get some rest,’ he ordered curtly.

Despite her godfather’s advice, sleep eluded Alexa as the jet soared through the dark skies. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Jackson staring blindly through the porthole on the other side of the aisle.

The sun rose on the horizon shortly after they passed Moscow. They flew over the frozen landscape of the Eastern European Plain and the Kama River before landing at the deserted Bolshoye Savino International Airport nine miles outside the city of Perm just before midday. Storm clouds raced across the gray skies from the foothills of the Central Ural Mountains and brought a flurry of sleet over their heads as they made their way to the four-by-fours waiting on the edge of the tarmac.

‘Where are the rest of your men?’ asked Reznak stiffly of the Crovir Hunter who appeared to be in charge of the team of ten immortals.

The Hunter shifted awkwardly. ‘I’m afraid the new Head of the Order delayed their deployment by two hours,’ he replied in a low voice. ‘Something came up in Germany.’

Reznak swore. ‘I should have brought men from my own bloody Section!’

‘Yeah, but they’re not exactly warriors, boss,’ said Carrington with a grimace.

Reznak scowled. ‘They didn’t do too badly against Agatha Vellacrus’s army a month ago.’

They climbed in the vehicles and made their way east along a motorway. Soon, they exited a main road and pulled up under a copse on the edge of a military airbase southwest of the city.

The lights of the Il-476 blazed brightly as it taxied at the end of a runway a thousand feet from their location. It turned onto a side ramp before slowly rolling to a stop. The cargo hold opened moments later.

Alexa raised a pair of powerful binoculars to her eyes and stared at the fleet of SUVs that drove out of the aircraft. A muscle twitched in her jaw when she glimpsed the immortals who had attacked them at the Freemasons’ Hall.

‘I don’t see Cavaleti or Dragov,’ she said after a few tense seconds. She shared a troubled glance with Reznak.

They got back in the four-by-fours and caught up with the convoy of vehicles on the road heading into Perm. They followed cautiously from a distance.

The SUVs finally turned onto a dirt track after several miles, crossed an empty industrial estate, and parked next to an abandoned warehouse. Carrington switched off the headlights of their vehicle and brought it to a stop in the shadow of a building about four hundred feet away.

Reznak stared through the windscreen from the rear seat. ‘What the hell are they up to?’ he murmured.

The snowfall had almost doubled in the last ten minutes and an eerie twilight had fallen across the city. Icy rain pelted the roof of the four-by-four, the noise of the drops mimicking the ricochet of gunfire.

They were at one of the train stations that served the city of Perm and the Trans-Siberian Railway. Up ahead, the shadowy figures of Kronos started to unload crates from the rear of the stationary SUVs. Light flared across the frozen ground next to them when the doors of the warehouse opened. A pair of forklift trucks rolled out of the building. A second group of men followed behind.

‘Looks like they’re going somewhere,’ said Jackson.

‘Eva’s viewpoint above us is not going to be of any use,’ said Reznak, frowning at the gray screen of the computer on his lap. ‘Even infrared imaging will prove futile in this weather.’

Alexa looked at the rail tracks on the right. She opened the passenger door and stepped out of the vehicle. An icy wind whipped sleet across her face and the hood of the white parka she wore over her jacket. Her gaze shifted to the dim shapes in the distance. ‘I’ll do some recon.’

Reznak looked at her steadily from the rear seat. ‘Take Yonten with you,’ he ordered. He turned to Carrington. ‘Go around the opposite way with a couple of the Hunters.’

The Crovir grinned and slipped out of the driver’s seat.

Alexa looked at Yonten. Although he had been unhappy about it, the monk had been persuaded to change into a snow camouflage suit before they left the jet. He had, however, insisted on wearing the saffron robes beneath it.

They used the cover of the worsening blizzard to cross the two hundred feet of open ground that separated them from the rows of goods wagons to the right. Alexa halted in the shelter of the first boxcars and moved slowly forward across the icy ground. Light stabbed through the gloom in front of them. Muffled thuds rose above the whistling of the wind.

Moments later, they dropped and crawled under one of the wagons. Alexa shuffled forward and suddenly froze in the shadows beneath the carriage.

Boyko Dragov stood fifty feet ahead and to her left. He was talking to the immortal with the pale blue eyes. Behind them, the forklift trucks loaded the crates from the SUVs onto a train. Smoke curled from the roof of the diesel locomotive at the head of the linked goods wagons. The muted roar of the engine shook the metal tracks and sleepers she and the monk lay against.

She studied the busy scene for several seconds before rolling carefully out from under the boxcar. She signaled to Yonten. The monk nodded and followed her as she crept back along the line for some twenty feet. They moved behind the next column of cars before edging forward again.

‘Dimitri, they’re getting ready to leave on a freight train,’ Alexa said into the wireless transmitter pinned to the hood of her parka. ‘The tablet and the pendant must be in one of the carriages.’

Reznak’s voice came through the receiver in her ear. ‘Carrington can’t get to the other end of the tracks. He’s in the line of sight of two of their vehicles.’

Alexa finally stopped and scrutinized the train thirty feet to their left through a gap between two cars. The first three carriages behind the locomotive were passenger coaches; shadows moved behind the steamed-up windows above the tracks.

Unease darted through her. They had to move
now
.

‘I’m going in,’ she said in low voice.

There was a long pause. Alexa heard the words of caution her godfather did not express in the tone of his voice. ‘Okay,’ said Reznak reluctantly.

She looked at Yonten over her shoulder. The monk grinned at her.

They slipped under the coupling of the two cars, ran across the gap to the freight train, and halted in the shadow of a wagon. Yonten looked up and quickly scaled the side of the boxcar. Alexa followed him to the top.

The icy wind whipped at their clothes and stung their faces when they slithered onto the roof of the train. Their snowsuits protected them from the worst of the cold as they lay exposed to the harsh elements.

Doors slammed somewhere below. The metal carriage shuddered under Alexa’s hands. She shifted carefully to the edge of the snow-covered surface and looked down. Dragov had disappeared from the edge of the tracks.

She peered ahead to where the last sect members were climbing into the passenger carriages. A burst of smoke accompanied the rising rumble of the diesel locomotive as the train slowly pulled away and started to move east.

Ten seconds later, Yonten tapped her on the shoulder. Alexa looked back to where he pointed. A shadowy figure in a snow camouflage suit was climbing onto the roof of the last boxcar some hundred and sixty feet behind them.

It was Jackson.

Alexa stifled a curse, turned, and moved swiftly toward the Harvard professor. Yonten stayed put, an anxious smile hovering on his lips as he watched her leave.

The train started to gather speed after it exited the station. The frozen waters of the Kama River materialized to the left of the tracks. She had just cleared the second of the three wagons separating her from Jackson when he suddenly disappeared from view.

Her heart thudded painfully inside her chest. Alexa rose and ran across the shaking rooftop.

The train lurched beneath her when she landed on the final boxcar. She staggered to the edge of the wagon as it swerved north onto a bridge that spanned the river and caught a glimpse of the distant ice-covered waters below. She steadied herself a second before she lost her balance.

Frost coated her eyelashes and a glacial rain numbed her face as she peered into the deepening gloom. Relief flashed through her. There was a faint, square-shaped brightness ahead. She crouched and inched carefully to the edge of the skylight. As she peered over the metal lip of the opening, the birthmark on the back of her neck started to throb.

A feeble glow illuminated the interior of the carriage below. It was an old livestock wagon with louvered windows making up its east wall and a pair of stalls at the north end.

It was empty—except for two large stone tombs strapped heavily to the middle of the floor.

Alexa stared at the sarcophagi, the trishula burning fiercely at her nape. A heartbeat later, she spotted the figure creeping from the shadows beneath her toward the tombs. She choked back another curse and dropped through the opening.

Jackson turned around at the soft sound of her landing. His ice-blue eyes were bright with barely concealed excitement and frustratingly devoid of all apprehension. ‘It’s the tombs,’ he whispered shakily, his hand inches from the dark stone.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she hissed, storming toward him.

A guilty grimace dawned on his face. ‘I was coming to join you. I just happened to spot these through the skylight,’ he said defensively, indicating the sarcophagi.

Alexa glanced at the bulkhead behind him. A door stood in the middle of the wall. The boxcar had a second compartment. She looked around. There was an exit in the north wall of the carriage, between the two stalls.

‘We need to get out of here,’ she said briskly.

‘But—’ started Jackson.

The bulkhead door opened and the immortal she had shot in the head in Istanbul stepped over the threshold. He backed into their compartment as he talked to someone in the adjacent room. A second later, he turned and stared into the twin barrels of the Sigs.

Alexa smiled grimly and pulled the triggers. The immortal jerked as the bullets slammed into his chest. Wide-eyed incomprehension flared in his eyes before he slumped to the floor. Shadowy figures shifted in the dimly lit chamber behind him.