Black Scorpion (16 page)

“There's nothing I can do to change your mind, is there?” Saltuk said, his thin, knobby shoulders framed by the golden rays of the sun. “You are determined to do this.”

They made for a strange pair seated together, thanks in large part to Saltuk's frail appearance contrasted against Raven's vital one. She never wore, nor needed, makeup, preferring the perpetually tanned look her dark shading created. Her unique combination of grace, strength, and beauty led to the stares of men being constantly cast her way. Raven always pretended she didn't notice, never meeting their gazes with her emerald-green eyes she had once been told could pierce any man's very soul.

“Yes,” she said to Saltuk, “I am.”

“Even if I were to evoke Adnan Talu's name, what he might think of this fool's errand you're about to embark on?”

“I wish I could let it go, I truly do.”

“We all have choices, Raven.”

“Not this time.”

*   *   *

It had been Talu who'd rescued her from the orphanage after she'd given up hope anyone would ever come for her. She remembered his limp, born of a shattered leg in a boyhood accident at sea, that noticeably worsened with the years. As a young girl, Raven had little recollection of him even using a cane and it saddened her to see how badly his infirmity came to hobble him as he aged. Talu was the closest thing to a parent Raven ever had, and she still remembered the day he plucked her from the orphanage to be raised as his daughter.

Raven had virtually no memory of all of the time before she came to the orphanage, as if that's where life had begun for her. She did recall strange dreams that would haunt her sleep and rouse her screaming to awaken the other children in the crowded dormitory. The dream always began with the sound of firecrackers and finished with her feeling the warm soak of blood over her clothes as she struggled to breathe. She hadn't thought much about those dreams in a very long time.

Until sight of the little girl hugging her mother's corpse in the cargo hold of the
Lucretia Maru
brought them all back to her.

*   *   *

“What can you tell me about the organization behind that slave ship and its leader, Ismael?” she asked Saltuk.

“I am doing you no favors by telling you anything. This is bad for business, very bad.”

“Some things are more important.”

“
Nothing
is more important than business. Beyond that, fighting battles that can't be won risks squandering all we've achieved. Talu taught you that from the first moment he brought you into the organization.”

“Talu is dead. So were half the people in that cargo hold. You call
that
good business?”

“No, I don't. But it's also none of
our
business.”

“Yours maybe.”

“And why do you care so much all of a sudden?”

“Because even a pirate has a code, a sense of honor, lines that are not to be crossed. Because if I do nothing, I'm as bad as the monster responsible for what I saw.”

“An excellent explanation. Now, tell me the truth.”

Raven thought again of the crying child calling to her dead mother while trying to rouse her. “I don't know, I truly don't. What I saw on that ship triggered something inside me. I haven't been able to think of anything else since, except the man behind the human trafficking that filled that cargo hold with people. Tell me how I can find him, Ismael.”

“This man you seek has unfathomable power and an army to protect him.”

“Don't make me ask you again.”

“You can't get to him; no one can. Even I've never met this man; our business is always conducted through intermediaries who insulate his very existence. In Eastern Europe, where he's reputedly from, they call him the devil. And I've heard nothing to make me dispute that point.”

“You wouldn't be here now, if you had nothing for me. You came because you found what I asked for and you want to talk me out of using the information.”

Saltuk sighed deeply and shrugged. “Guilty as charged. But I don't have much. Just rumors of Black Scorpion's interest in an archaeological dig.”

“Where?”

“Romania. The region of Transylvania.”

 

THIRTY-SIX

L
AKE
L
AS
V
EGAS,
N
EVADA

“We're salvaging the contents of Edward Devereaux's room from the Daring Sea,” Naomi Burns said back inside, keeping her distance as Michael sprawled on the floor playing with his house-trained pet black panther, Nero. “In cooperation with the police, of course.”

In the ten years they had known each other, Michael had never seen Naomi dressed in anything approaching casual. All business, all the time; first as a lawyer with a prestigious New York law firm and then King Midas World's and Tyrant Entertainment's corporate counsel after Michael had intervened during a nasty, and unfounded, fraud investigation. Like everything else, Naomi took her attire seriously, preferring Chanel and Nicole Miller as well as Armani. A mix of colors chosen to accentuate her olive skin and perfectly coiffed auburn hair that was the longest Michael had ever seen it.

She'd been at his side through all his interaction with police earlier in the evening, including an interview with the two LVPD detectives he recognized as frequent patrons of Cobra, one of the Seven Sins nightspots that had become the most popular club in Las Vegas. Their questions at this point were cursory at best, merely preliminary since they knew no more about the victim, or his true purpose in coming to the city in general and the Seven Sins in particular, than Michael did.

Michael continued tussling with Nero, as he weighed the update Naomi had just provided. “Why don't you come closer?”

“Because that thing scares me.”

“Nero's tamer than a house cat. Why don't you tell me what's really bothering you?”

“It's about Devereaux,” Naomi told him. “He originally reserved a regular room, but his reservation was lost.”

“Explaining how he ended up with the upgrade to a Daring Sea suite.”

“Could be his killer created the whole scenario to enable the murder. Our upgrade policy in such cases is fairly common knowledge.”

“Sure, and there were a thousand easier ways to kill him. But they chose this one because it would do the most damage to the Seven Sins. My gut says somebody wanted to send me a message, Naomi.”

Naomi checked an incoming text and said, “Get ready for another bad one.”

*   *   *

“One of Devereaux's possessions bears special attention,” she continued.

“Besides his laptop?” Alexander posed.

“In addition to: a portable DNA analyzer.”

Michael's eyebrows flickered. “I didn't know such a thing existed.”

“It does and Devereaux had one at the Seven Sins. The submersible also located one of his hands. It's been turned over to the police, so if there's a match to his fingerprints on any international database, we'll know who he really is soon enough.”

“What else, Naomi?”

“That's enough for now.”

“Then let me add something,” Michael told both her and Alexander. “Remember what that technician in the control room said about the sharks? Well, I've never seen them behave as aggressively as they did last night either. Never. Something set them off.”

“Besides blood, you mean,” Naomi raised.

“The behavior started before there was any blood. This was something else, something we've never encountered before. We find out what that is and we'll have a much better idea of what we're facing.” Michael moved his gaze to a trio of wall-mounted monitors broadcasting a rotation of scenes from inside the Seven Sins property. “If only he could tell us,” he added, focusing on the one now picturing Assassino in the Daring Sea.

 

THIRTY-SEVEN

B
UN
Ă
Z
IUA,
R
OMANIA

Scarlett and Ilie had fled after watching two dozen or so young women and children being herded onto the blue bus that had come as part of the convoy. They'd clung to the cover of the trees and brush that dominated the lower reaches of the mountain range that was centered among a host of towns of varying sizes. They'd emerged finally on a narrow, gravelly road with a thin canal dug to siphon off the water from spring storms on the side opposite this part of the range.

Scarlett crouched and again laid her hands on the boy's shoulders. If not for being with her, he'd be on that bus too.

“You must go now,” she said and signed at the same time.

No,
he signed, shaking his head.
I stay with you.

You can't. Your family needs you.

She waited for him to nod, then watched the breath catching in his throat, the boy starting to choke up.

My grandfather,
he signed.

Scarlett hugged him tight to her as he broke down, and Ilie's sobs finally receded.

You'll be safe,
she signed and spoke, easing him away.
I promise.

The boy nodded resolutely. Scarlett hugged him one more time and then pressed on, looking back only once.

The road signs said Bun
ă
Ziua was five kilometers away, but it felt closer to ten by the time she finally got there at dusk. An actual bustling town in comparison to the much smaller Vadja with shops, stores, restaurants, and bars. It was located along a commercial route used by trucks ferrying goods throughout the countryside, a kind of stopover way station.

She walked along the town's main drag, convinced all eyes were turned her way. Had the perpetrators of the massacre and the dark figure in the black veil put out the word to watch out for her? Probably not. After all, how often did the villagers see a grimy and disheveled Western woman wearing torn and tattered clothes ambling along their streets? But the looks those passing closest to her cast left Scarlett checking her reflection in a storefront window lit by a street lamp to find parts of her hair and face still splattered with dried flecks of blood sprayed from the bodies of friends killed close to her back at the dig.

She shuddered again at the thought of them being gunned down at the site and felt herself seized by a fresh wave of terror and panic. Having worked in some of the most dangerous and precarious areas of the world, she was no stranger to risk, to danger. But this kind of experience stretched far, far beyond anything she'd contemplated within the realm of possibility.

Then again, what she'd uncovered in that hidden chamber was far beyond anything history had offered to her before. The means to prove one of the greatest legends science and superstition had ever conspired to create was, in fact, true. But her surviving the massacre at the dig site would mean nothing, if she didn't live to tell of it.

Her clothes had been soiled and shredded by the long trek through the woods. Branches had scratched at her face and scalp, left her wavy hair a matted mess amid scratches and scabs. She'd perspired through her shirt and miles back had come to loathe the stink of herself, embarrassed to enter a public place looking and smelling like this. The last of the day's sun had burned her face, leaving it hot to the touch and stinging incessantly.

Walking along the central square of Bun
ă
Ziua, Scarlett was keenly aware of uneasy and curious stares cast her way. Attention was the last thing she needed right now and she crossed the street, since the opposite side seemed less traveled. She took to aiming her eyes downward and quickened her pace, hoping to draw as few stares as possible and focusing on the street as she walked. It was reasonably well paved to a stone-like finish and lined with vehicles. She seemed to recall a nearby mill employed much of the town's people, distinguishing this village from those of the farming variety that enclosed it, the old and the modern mixing well. It even boasted the one movie theater for many miles, but no police station she could see anywhere in evidence.

Not that it mattered. If the dark figure, this devil who'd come to Vadja, was as powerful as she sensed, there was no telling who he held in his pocket, starting with the very authorities charged with protecting the people from him.

So she stopped looking for the local
policia
station and headed toward the first bar she spotted instead.

 

THIRTY-EIGHT

L
AKE
L
AS
V
EGAS,
N
EVADA

While they waited for the next series of reports, Michael returned his gaze to the twinkling lights of boats drifting about Lake Las Vegas beyond his property. He had christened his gated seventeen-acre estate
Roma Vetus
, Latin for “Life of Rome.” His ten-thousand-square-foot home sat in a modest three-acre section, beyond which lay an additional fourteen acres patrolled by Michael's collection of big cats. His several tigers and five lions had free rein on those fourteen acres Michael had named the Serengeti, adjacent to
Roma Vetus
. He'd hired a caretaker as handler of his animals, amazed at the man's ability to walk safely among them, to supervise their care and feeding along with a veterinarian who was on call twenty-four hours a day.

The rickety cobblestone drive forced those entering to keep their pace slow on the chance that one of the big cats strayed into their path. His house was accessible by a second gate opening into a valet area and enclosed with an electronic fence to keep the big cats from wandering inside.

Roma Vetus
, with its marble floors, authentic moldings, and archways constructed in Italy, had long been his sanctuary away from the hurriedness and energy of the Seven Sins. A welcome respite of solitude and peace where he could enjoy all the keepsakes of his various accomplishments. But that wasn't the case tonight.