Blood Cursed (Rogue Angel) (24 page)

Dragging the chair out of the way, Annja moved along the wall until she reached the doorway and closed the door, leaving the men alone in the room. She had no idea if others were in the building, but the fight had not brought out any armed guards. They could be alone.

She still had no evidence on Bracks’s involvement beyond the confession to go to the police with. And to do so would get Garin arrested, as well.

The door rattled against her shoulders. Felt like two hard, brute bodies had collided with it. She heard very little grunting and only the occasional oath. They were two extremely fit and trained men going after the thing that had pushed them to an edge.

They’d been going at each other for years? Sounded like something Garin would engage in. And now he’d grown tired of the game. Again, sounded like him. He enjoyed the challenge, but when that challenge started to bite, he’d as soon shoot it than endure another wound.

And that’s when Annja heard the pistol shot.

Summoning the sword into her grip, she turned and grabbed the doorknob. She listened for movement, anything that would clue her where the two parties in the room stood so she wouldn’t be charging in with a target marked on her forehead.

“It’s over,” Garin called.

She opened the door and saw Bracks standing in the center of the room, a gun very slowly falling from his hand. A bullet had pierced his skull at the temple, boring through a small crimson hole. It exited in a spray out the other temple, and hit the wall next to a previous bullet hole, with a splash of blood to the papered wall.

Annja swung the sword toward Garin, and tipped it up under his chin. “Why? We should have called the police.”

“It wasn’t going to end any other way. And I’m getting too old for rock-’em-sock-’em.” He held up his gun hand, fingers slipping from the trigger, in surrender. “One of us was going to die in this room, Annja.”

“You’ve murdered the one man who could answer to the Romani for their lost children.”

Garin lifted his head and looked down his nose at her. He then bowed his head and the tiniest shrug lifted his shoulders. An unspoken apology for what he had just done. Perhaps, for many other things he had done.

“I ended a long and tiresome feud, and I don’t regret it. Now put away your pretty little sword before I get angry enough to take it away from you.”

“Try me,” she challenged, aware now that Bracks’s body had finally dropped over the chair she’d been tied in. His lifeless hand landed on top of her boot. “Take it if you dare, Garin. But I warn you, I won’t make it easy.”

He slashed his pistol across the blade, sliding the barrel along the steel. Twisting, he reached with his other hand, and clocked her aside the jaw, in the same place he’d hit her previously.

Annja released the sword to the otherwhere, rather than risk him actually getting his hands on it. When she straightened from the blow and showed him her empty hands, the man grunted. She would call it a growl.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said, tugging down his shirtsleeves. “I’ll clean up the mess. If I see you again, Annja, it’ll be too soon.”

“You know we’ll see each other again, and again. The sword ties us together, like it or not.”

“Today I don’t like it.”

“I can get behind that sentiment.”

The two held stares for long seconds. Annja was certain she saw regret in Garin’s dark gaze, but pride would never allow him to voice it. He was old and set in his ways. She should be thankful a dangerous man was now dead, unable to harm another child.

“If you’re going to clean up,” she said, “then make sure Bracks’s underlings are dealt with, as well. Canov is a name I have.”

“Canov has already been dealt with,” he said.

That’s right. He’d admitted that Canov had been on his payroll. “What about the other men who work for Bracks?”

“Don’t ask for the world. All I can give you is this small piece, right here, right now.”

She paused in the doorway and tilted her head down, fighting the urge to look at the man she would indeed see again, and knowing it would be too soon, as he’d said.

He and Bracks could not have ended this encounter any other way, she instinctually knew that. And while she had no clue as to what strange alliance had forged the criminal games between the two, she also didn’t want to know.

She wasn’t sure whether or not to mark this one as a win or lose, but it felt less than triumphant.

Walking away, without looking back, she made plans to stop into the university and talk to Chester Rumshaven, Luke’s colleague.

* * *

T
HE
STUDIO
WORK
for
Chasing History’s Monsters
was always tedious for Annja. But the fact it gave her a moment to sit down and blow out a breath after filming could not be denied as a good thing. She read over Doug’s script for the segment they planned on the chewing dead. It was very good and included the history of so-called vampires across the Slavic nations. It also detailed the burial rites that had seen stakes, iron rods and even bricks put into bodies to keep them down and dead.

As she scanned through the edited segments, she was impressed as well by Doug’s renditions of corpses rising from the grave after having chewed through their funeral shrouds. Cheap actors with even cheaper makeup, but it worked.

It was sad to see the interview segments featuring Luke. Doug had asked her if he should cut them out, and she said she’d let him know after viewing them. Luke had been genuinely concerned for the Romani and had hoped to help them move forward from a history of beliefs that even he knew could never happen.

She couldn’t decide whether or not to leave the segments in. A few days to let it sink in and perhaps she’d have a clearer head to make the right choice.

She finished narrating the segment with a few cautious words of her own, advising viewers to stick to horror-movie monsters, and to leave the legends buried.

Before leaving the studio she called the Chrastava police and mentioned Luke’s name in order to speak to the deputy he had befriended a year earlier. He had been the first one to report to the scene after she’d called in Luke’s death and Santos’s wounds. Annja expressed an interest in the Romani encampment, and how they were holding up in the wake of the children’s disappearances. All the deputy could offer was that the Romani camp had moved on. The homes were empty and vehicles gone. Surprising, considering those who owned property generally remained where they were.

It turned out Santos had died in the end. After his funeral, which the deputy had attended out of respect for the family after investigating the whole child-abduction case, he’d been offered the chance to buy a nice weapon. A katana sword, which he had purchased, and then, when he’d gotten home with it, the niggling worry that it was probably evidence tore at him, and he’d sent it to forensics.

Forensics had detected blood, and they were typing it out right now, and hoping to do a DNA match to the database.

“Interesting,” Annja had said, then had thanked the deputy and hung up.

“Blood on Santos’s sword?”

Annja knew it was Luke’s, and yet, it could also be hers. The deputy had taken surprising initiative in having the sword tested. She hoped the DNA didn’t lead them back to her. This particular case was closed in her mind. She didn’t want to see another skull with a brick, or even a stake run through a corpse’s heart, for a very long time.

* * *

L
ATER
THAT
WEEK
, in her Brooklyn apartment, Annja reread the last few paragraphs of the article she was completing about the Romani burial rituals and beliefs. She wasn’t going as in depth as Luke had intended, incorporating their superstitions and beliefs, but she was doing the best she could with the firsthand information she had witnessed. She’d downloaded Luke’s notes from the cloud server, and thanks to his details and meticulous notes, she had mostly filled in the blanks. Luke would have wanted her to finish this for him. She would publish it under her name, with a postmortem attribution to Luke Spencer.

The idea to do an article on the chewing dead was fleeting. She’d leave the sensational vampire stuff to Doug Morrell.

She leaned back in her office chair and eyed the cardboard box that sat open, packing material still tight about the contents. The skull she’d had mailed from Liberec had arrived a few days ago. She intended to turn it over to Chester Rumshaven, who had offices in New York and London. He’d know what to do with it. All of Luke’s projects would be cataloged and his personal belongings forwarded on to family.

She hadn’t known his family, but had been honored to be his friend, colleague and someone he had trusted.

Pouring a finger of whiskey into the shot glass beside her laptop, she saluted. “To Luke!”

The liquor burned in the sweetest way. This adventure had been bittersweet, but in the end, Luke’s tenacity and determination had prompted her to remain involved and they had saved children, she knew that to her very marrow.

She would have liked to have brought Bracks to justice, but suspected he was serving it already.

As for Garin Braden, they had clashed this time around.

There was always a next time.

* * *

“I
T
’
S
DONE
. I
PLAYED
the final move against Bracks.”

“You always did like to win.”

Prepared to protest Roux’s acerbic comment, Garin stopped himself from sounding like a prideful old bastard.

“Indeed, I like to win,” he agreed. “Annja sends her love.”

“Does she now? The two of you come to terms and play nice?”

“She did spend the night in my hotel room, so take that how you will. Good night, Roux.” He hung up, smirking. Roux would eventually decide that Garin had been baiting him, but to know he’d initially be shocked and upset thinking that Annja Creed may have spent the night with him was a win too sweet to ignore.

* * * * *

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ISBN: 9781460318836

Copyright © 2013 by Worldwide Library

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