Gabriel's Horn (2 page)

One of the other stunt coordinators joined Annja and dropped to his knees. His mouth was moving. She knew he was shouting something. He was young, tall and gangly, and he was in shock.

Annja grabbed one of his hands and directed him to take hold of the makeshift pressure bandage she’d created. For a moment he froze. With authority, Annja caught his face in her palms. She met his eyes with hers and struggled to remember his name.

“Tony,” she said. “It’s Tony, right?” She couldn’t hear herself.

“I can’t hear you,” he said.

Annja read his lips. “It’s okay,” she told him. “Your hearing will come back.” She hoped that was true.

Sirens, muted and faraway sounding, reached her and gave her hope that her hearing hadn’t been permanently destroyed.

Tony nodded, but he didn’t look any less scared.

“He’s hurt,” Annja told Tony. “Hold the pressure on the wound. Like this.” She guided his hands.

“Okay,” he said. “I got it.”

“I’m going to look for a first-aid kit,” Annja shouted.

Tony nodded and held on to the rolled-up shirt.

Annja got up. Her legs were shaky. She felt her phone vibrate in her pants pocket. Still on the move, she took the phone out and glanced at the number. She’d been expecting a call from Garin Braden, but the call was from New York. It was from Doug Morrell, her producer on
Chasing History’s Monsters.

She switched the phone off and returned it to her pocket. With her hearing compromised, the last thing she needed was a phone call.

Burning debris from the motorcycle littered the immediate vicinity. Annja looked for Roy Fein’s body, knowing that he might not have survived the fall and the flames. Fire-suppression teams worked the air bag’s surface. White flame-retardant foam coated the bag and made it slippery.

Some of Annja’s tension drained away when she realized Roy had made it to the air bag. Then she saw him moving. The distinctive motorcycle leathers bore scorch marks and charring, but he was standing on his own two feet.

All along the street, the set teams hustled to the site. Even with all the wreckage they’d seen and helped produce for the movies, the shooting teams weren’t prepared for the damage they saw now.

Without warning, another detonation occurred and the three stunt cars erupted in flames.

The force of the explosion blew Annja from her feet and rolled her away. A wave of heat washed over her back. Stunned, she lay still for a moment and checked the sidewalk around her for shadows of falling debris.

A dark mass centered over her as if she lay under a solar eclipse. She pushed her right hand against the street and rolled to her left. She barely made out the twisted wreckage of a burning car falling toward her.

2

The clangor of the mass of flaming metal striking the street jarred Annja and filled her head with noise. She lay still and stared at the debris that had barely missed her.

In that same moment, she spotted movement on top of one of the nearby buildings.

Three men stood atop the building. One held a box that looked similar to the one Barney had used. He pointed at Annja and spoke to his companions.

Another man drew a pistol from under his jacket and pointed it in Annja’s direction. She rolled to her feet and ran toward the building because it offered quick cover.

The third man slapped the second man’s arm down and the bullet fired into the rooftop. The sharp crack of the report barely registered in Annja’s hearing. She lost sight of the men as she ran into the alley.

When she spotted the skeletal fire escape tracking back and forth across the side of the building, she ran for it, leaped to catch hold of the lower rung and swung herself up like a gymnast. She raced through the ladders and landings as she pushed herself to reach the top.

The panorama of the red-tiled roofs that filled the city spread in all directions. The silvery shine of the river snaked through the heart of Prague.

Forcing herself to remain calm, Annja turned slowly. Thoughts of the pistol the man had been only too willing to use were foremost in her mind. She’d only been in Prague for a few days. She didn’t know anyone there who wanted to kill her.

The keening wail of the sirens drew closer.

From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the three men running across the next building. Annja launched herself in pursuit. She drove her legs hard and reached the building’s edge in a dozen strides. By that time she was up to speed.

A narrow gulf nearly three stories deep loomed before her. She never slackened her effort. Her left foot landed on the building’s edge and she propelled herself over the intervening distance.

Almost immediately she knew she hadn’t jumped high enough. She had the distance covered easily, but she dropped too quickly. Desperate, she threw her arms out and slammed against the other building with enough force to knock the wind from her lungs.

Her fingers curled as she slid down, then caught the lip of the roof. She pushed her hiking boots against the stone wall and found purchase. When she climbed up, she started to run again.

The men she pursued remained a building ahead of her. Concentrating, she found her rhythm. She leaped the next alley, landed and didn’t miss a stride. The distance between her and the three men was shrinking.

Ahead of her, the three men turned and looked back. The man with the pistol stopped suddenly and whirled around with the weapon before him. A green tattoo of a curved sword covered the hollow of his throat.

A quick step to the side put Annja out of range of the first bullet. The second chopped into the roof where she’d been. By that time she had taken cover behind a chimney. She felt the vibrations of bullets squarely striking it.

Were the men going to continue to flee? Or were they going to come back to finish the job? Especially since she’d cut herself off from possible help.

You really need to stop and think some of these things through before you do them, she chided herself. The problem with that was there generally wasn’t much time for thinking when something like this happened.

And information—any information—was better than no information. She wanted to know who the men were and why they’d tried to kill her.

She was sure they’d been there to kill her, not anyone connected with the movie.

Squatting down, her breath still coming smoothly in spite of her exertion, Annja reached for her sword. She felt it with her hand and drew it forth from the otherwhere.

The sword was a part of her life she was still struggling to understand. She set herself, arms bent at the elbow, balancing the sword straight up in front of her.

Her hearing was still muffled so Annja watched for moving shadows to either side of her. It was late enough in the afternoon that the shadows would be long, but they wouldn’t be bent toward her since the men were south of her position. She also paid attention to the vibrations throbbing through the rooftop.

Three more rounds slammed into the chimney. Stone chips sprayed the rooftop. After a moment, Annja glanced around the chimney and saw the men fleeing. She sped after them with the sword in her hand.

After leaping to the next building, she made it to the fire escape before they could reach the ground. The man with the pistol leaned out from the second-floor landing and fired several shots.

Annja dodged back just in time for the shots to miss her. The bullets ripped along the low brick wall in front of her and tore through the air. She reversed her grip on the sword, stepped along the wall four paces and leaned out again.

The man stood farther down the stairs, almost to the ground.

As the man turned toward her and froze in his position, Annja whipped the sword at him. The keen blade caught the man high in the chest and knocked him over the railing. He dropped in a loose heap to the ground and writhed in pain.

He wasn’t dead. She hadn’t intended to kill him. Although she had killed while saving her life or the lives of others, the idea of doing that didn’t sit well with her.

Annja started to climb down, but the other two men pulled out pistols. She ducked back again. Great, she thought. Everyone has a gun but me.

Bullets smacked against the building. She felt the vibrations more than she heard the harsh cracks of the gunshots.

She concentrated for just a moment, felt for the sword and pulled it through otherwhere again. On the ground, the man screamed in agony. The blade appeared in her hands blood free. Annja still didn’t know how the sword did what it did, but she’d come to trust it and use it when necessary.

She shifted and moved to a new position. Then she looked over the roof’s edge again. Below, the two healthy men had the third man between them in a fireman’s carry. They ran toward the street. One of the men talked on a phone.

Annja started down the fire escape with the sword in her hand. She took the steps two and three at a time, boots thudding against the steps, almost spilling over the landings in her haste. At the second-floor landing she let her momentum get the best of her and vaulted over the side. She flipped and landed on her feet, her sword swept back and ready.

A dark sedan screeched to a stop near the three fleeing men. The rear door swung open. The two men carrying the third stared in awe at Annja. They passed their wounded comrade inside and climbed in after him.

Annja ran after them, thinking that she might be able to keep pace. She willed the sword away and reached for her phone. For a moment she kept up with the retreating vehicle and strained to make out the license plate.

The rear window sank down smoothly. The wicked mouth of a submachine pistol jutted out just as Annja closed in on an outdoor café packed with diners.

Annja couldn’t risk innocent bystanders. The people at the café would never see the threat in time, much less be able to take evasive action. Frustrated, she stopped, then dived for cover as the submachine gun chattered to life. Bullets passed over her head and shattered the windows of the clothing store behind her.

Glass shards rattled down all around her. She kept her hands and arms wrapped around her head to protect her face. The deadly rain had stopped, and she made sure she wasn’t bleeding from anything serious. When she looked up, the dark sedan was gone.

She punched the car’s license plate number into her phone’s memory and hoped the police would arrive soon.

3

Annja watched the Prague police detective and tried to read his lips. The man’s mouth hardly moved, and the bushy mustache further disguised what he was saying.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re going to have to speak up.” Her own words barely penetrated the thick cotton in her ears. “I can’t hear very well since the explosions.”

The detective, whose name was Skromach, calmly started over. He looked like a patient man. Slight of stature, he exuded an air of competence. His salt-and-pepper hair needed the attention of a barber, but his suit was impeccable.

“You ran after the men, Miss Creed?” Skromach asked.

“Yes.” Annja sat on the steps of a nearby building. An ambulance attendant treated a thin cut below her left eye and another along her jawline. Neither was bad enough to scar, but they would show for a while. She hoped Garin wasn’t planning on taking her anywhere too elegant because she would look like a ragamuffin.

Skromach held his pen poised over his notepad. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“I didn’t want the men who did this to get away.”

The detective nodded. “You think they did this?”

Annja nodded at the burning pyre of cars the local fire department was dealing with. Water streamed from hoses. Gray steam clouds mixed with the black smoke.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said.

Skromach shrugged. “Perhaps it was an overzealous special-effects person.”

“No,” Annja said, feeling the need to defend Barney and his crew. “That blast was deliberately set.”

“For the movie, yes?”

“No.” Annja shook her head. The ambulance attendant, a no-nonsense woman, grabbed her chin and held her steady. “The special-effects crew is good. They wouldn’t make that kind of mistake.”

Skromach flipped back through his notes. Annja had seen him questioning movie people while she’d talked to Barney and Roy. Both of them were banged up but they were going to be fine.

“I see here that you’re not a special-effects person,” the police detective said.

“No,” Annja said, realizing her hearing was beginning to clear.

Skromach nodded. “You’re here as an archaeologist attached to the film?”

“Yes. But I’m only loosely attached. I’m taking care of the props.”

“I see. Tell me about the props.”

“They’re Egyptian. Statues of Bast and Anubis.”

“Were they pharaohs?”

“No. Gods. A god and goddess, to be exact. Bast is an ancient goddess worshiped since the Second Dynasty. About five thousand years, give or take. Anubis was the god of the underworld. Usually he’s shown having the head of a jackal.”

That seemed to catch Skromach’s interest. “These statues are valuable?”

“Only to a collector. They aren’t actually thousands of years old, but they are a few hundred.”

“A few hundred years seems like a valuable thing. I collect stamps myself, and some of those are worth an incredible amount of money after only a short time.”

“That’s generally because they’re issued with flaws. This—” Annja tried to find the words she wanted but failed “—wouldn’t be like that.”

“I see.” Skromach didn’t sound convinced.

“Someone hosed the gag,” Annja said.

Skromach blinked. “Hosed the gag?”

“Sorry. The explosions were no accident,” Annja said confidently.

“You’re no authority,” the detective replied.

Annja sighed. The conversation seemed determined to go in circles. “Check with Barney Yellowtail. He’ll tell you the same thing.”

“I expect that he would. Especially in light of the fact that he was responsible for the
gag,
as you put it.”

Don’t get angry, Annja told herself. He’s just trying to do his job.