Rogue Angel 52: Death Mask (14 page)

21

08:30
—The Alhambra

“Annja here,” she said into the phone.

It wasn’t Roux. It was the kidnappers.

“Welcome to Granada,” the voice said. “I trust you had an enjoyable flight?”

“What next?” she asked. “Where are we meeting? I’ve got the mask. You’ve got my friend. Let’s get this over with and get out of each other’s lives.”

“Tetchy, aren’t we? There’s a car in the parking lot,” the voice said, ignoring her question just as she had ignored his. “A red Alfa Romeo. The keys are tucked in the sun visor. Take the road to the Alhambra. I’ll give you instructions as you drive.”

“I want to know where I’m going,” she said.

“And you will. In time. Now get in the car and start driving. Ticktock. Ticktock.”

Annja headed out into the parking lot. Part of her was surprised that the man hadn’t mentioned the helicopter, but she took that as a sign that she had at least a few secrets from the kidnappers. She didn’t know if she’d be able to use that to her advantage, but it was always good to have an ace in the hole.

The bright red car was easy enough to find.

From the outside, it appeared to be in near-pristine condition. As she slid inside, she was hit by the new-leather smell. The dash still carried that sheen of showroom-fresh polish. The keys fell into her lap as she pulled the sun visor down. Annja put them in the ignition and felt as much as heard the roar as the engine burst into life. The odometer registered less than a thousand miles.

She pulled out of the parking lot, onto the airport-centric ring of roads that eventually pointed the way to the Alhambra. She kept the phone beside her on the seat, ready to answer the moment it rang.

She didn’t have to wait long.

“Next left,” the voice said, then hung up without waiting for her acknowledgment. She did as she was told. A few miles later, another call came, instructing her to take the next left to leave the main road and drive a few miles on another. This time the kidnapper didn’t kill the call. He directed her through a series of turns until she found herself in the middle of nowhere. In the distance she could make out the fortress city of the Alhambra bathed in the final rays of the setting sun, the light picking out some of the gilt-laden decorations.

“Look for the sign—it’s a parking lot. Pull in there and wait. Kill the engine.” She followed his directions and then waited.

Trees lined one side of the parking lot, making it feel like a viewing platform. She could hear the man’s breathing through the phone. It prevented her from enjoying the view that the Moors had left behind.

The light faded far faster than she had expected, shifting from gloom to near-darkness in what seemed like a matter of minutes.

She heard the approaching vehicle long before she saw it as it swept into the deserted parking lot. A black van, headlights off.

“Now get out of the car,” the voice on the phone said. She’d almost forgotten the call was still live.

She climbed out, leaving the mask on the passenger seat with the window down so she would be able to reach inside for it when she needed it. The van’s lights turned on, blinding her for a moment. The glare forced her to shield her eyes. She heard men getting out of the back of the van; a panel door slammed and feet crunched on gravel as the men moved toward her.

“Where is he?” she said, not sure which of the shapes belonged to the man who had been calling her.

“In good time,” one of the silhouettes said. Two figures moved forward, dragging a third between them. His feet dragged in the gravel. They dropped him. He fell forward, not even reaching out to break his fall.

Garin—it had to be him—was stripped to the waist with his hands tied behind his back. Even with the sack on his head, stained with dark patches of blood, it was obvious that he was in a bad way.

“Garin!” she cried, unable to stop herself.

She started to move toward him.

“Not so fast, Miss Creed.”

She stopped, fighting every instinct to run to his side. She could hear the ragged flare of his breathing, so she knew he was alive, but that was it. The two men who had dragged him out of the van stood in her way.

She faced them down.

The van’s headlights lowered from the dazzling high beams, revealing a little more than just the silhouettes of the men. They were like something fresh out of a nightmare, all of them dressed in black, all of them wearing silver masks.

They looked inhuman in the hazy glare of the headlights.

The silver masks were obviously intended to serve duel purposes—to intimidate and to hide their identities. Annja was face-to-face with the Brotherhood of the Burning.

She considered her options for a moment.

There had to be at least eight or nine men standing in front of her, all of them armed to the teeth with too much firepower—Steyr TMPs. Even in the bad light, the shape of the handheld machine pistols was distinctive. Joan of Arc’s sword was only an arm’s length away, and with it Annja was more than a match for the masked men, but all it took was one stray bullet, no matter how good she was or how unlucky they were. One bullet. That was how much a human life weighed at a time like this. She flexed her fingers, picturing the hilt of the sword, but stopped short of drawing it back from the otherwhere. It wasn’t worth taking the risk when she was this close to securing Garin’s freedom. They could stop the Brotherhood after he was safe.

“The mask,” one of the men said. His voice was muffled, but Annja recognized it as the one from the phone calls.

“It’s in the car,” she said.

“Get it.”

“Take that thing off his head first.”

“Very well. Do it,” the voice told one of his cronies.

One of the masked men bent down and pulled the sack from Garin’s head.

“There you go. See, no tricks.”

In the harsh blaze of the van’s headlights, Garin looked even worse than he had on the video stream. Shadows played on the cuts and bruises, distorting his features even more, making them almost monstrous. But there was no doubting that it was him. He coughed once, doubling up in pain, and spat blood. He didn’t try to struggle to his feet. He just lay there on the ground, breathing hard, blinking. He was alive. That was all that mattered.

Annja backed toward the car. Without turning her back on the masked men, she reached in through the window to retrieve the Mask of Torquemada and held it up for all to see.

“Is this what it’s all been about?” she asked.

What they didn’t know—couldn’t know—was that she’d photographed the relic from every possible angle, recording as much of it as she could. She and her colleagues could render those photographs and use them together with a 3-D printer to reconstruct the mask. It wouldn’t be the same, but if the mask itself was lost to the world here, a replica would be better than nothing. Still, losing the mask would be a pretty dramatic failure on her part, and she wasn’t in the habit of failing. She’d hand it over, yes, but Zanetti was already working on the mysterious swirls and text, trying to decipher them, and she’d do her damnedest to get the real thing back.

Contrary to what the kidnappers might think, it didn’t end here.

One of the brothers walked toward her. The others kept their Steyrs trained on her.

There was no going back.

Like it or not, she had to hand the mask over. Even then, she couldn’t be sure they intended to let her and Garin walk away from this little showdown. She looked down at him. He was in bad shape. He wouldn’t be able to do anything fast.

The man, the apparent leader, held his hand out. “The mask. Give it to me.”

She held on to it for a moment longer than necessary, mentally connecting with the sword in the otherwhere. A mistake now could be fatal for more than one of them. Right now it was all about staying alive.

He took the mask from her.

She could sense him smiling behind his own mask.

Before the night was out, she’d wipe that smile from his face. She promised herself that.

He turned the mask over in his hands, running his fingers over the curious swirls and symbols and debossed letters, then turned his back on her and started to walk toward the van.

And for a fraction of a second—less—she thought he’d given her the moment she wanted. It was too early, though. If she reached into the otherwhere now and struck him down, it wouldn’t end well. Different scenarios flashed through her mind. She could cut him down in a single slash, then grab him as he fell and turn his body into a shield. It would absorb a lot of the damage from the Steyrs, but at such close proximity, with so many of them trained on her, it wouldn’t be enough. This wasn’t her moment.

She watched him walk away, feeling lost and hopeless, as the other men climbed back inside the black van behind him. The door slammed, and seconds later, the tires spat gravel as it drove away, leaving Garin on the ground and Annja staring at their taillights, red spots disappearing down the road.

Annja ran to Garin’s side.

“Sight...sore...eyes.” He tried to grin.

“Shh, save your breath. We’ve got to get out of here.” She knelt down beside him and untied the cord binding his wrists. Without the headlights to show the complexities of the knot, it took a few seconds longer than it might have. “Then we’ll get you to a hospital. Get you checked out.”

“No hospital,” he mumbled.

“Yes, hospital. You’re a mess.”

“No...”

“We’ll argue about it in the car,” she said, not exactly conceding the point as she helped him to his feet. He leaned on her every step of the way as they walked gingerly back to the waiting Alfa Romeo. It wasn’t the ideal car for transporting the weak and the wounded, but it was better than trying to walk the miles back to civilization.

“Not so fast,” a voice called from the darkness.

She felt her heart sink.

The Brotherhood had no intention of letting them walk away from here, after all.

She took a deep breath, steadying herself.

She was never comfortable around death, unlike Roux and Garin. She hoped she never would be, either. If there was another way, she’d always seek it out, even if the sword was only ever a thought away, waiting for her to draw it from the ether. It was a last resort, never a first option.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said. But of course they did. They were acting under orders. The boss had the mask, and now it was time to tidy up the loose ends. And that was exactly what Annja and Garin had always been to the Brotherhood.

And that meant she had no choice. Not everyone was going to walk away from this ambush.

“Step away from the car.”

She did as she was told. One step, and another, holding her hands out away from her body. It looked like a sign of meek surrender. It wasn’t. She was doing what was needed to be ready to defend herself. She could almost feel the familiar weight of the sword in her hand. Her breathing quickened.

She stared into the darkness.

She could make out three distinct shapes.

They were spread out a few feet from one another.

This was only going to happen one way, and there was no use pretending she’d be able to talk her way out of it. Her hand closed around the hilt of her mystical blade, and in an instant it was there, forging a connection between Annja and the saint, blazing white in her hand as her would-be assassins unleashed the first burst of bullets. The sword was a weapon of justice as well as death. And for as long as she could, she’d use it to stay alive, not to kill. Metal ricocheted against metal as the blade intercepted the shots, deflecting them harmlessly away. The bullets, more than a dozen, clattered onto the hood of the Alfa Romeo in a chorus of steel rain. More shots. Her muscles burned. She went with instinct over sight, picking each one harmlessly out of the air as she stepped forward to meet the deadly hail of bullets. One of the Steyrs stuttered.

Annja hurled herself to the ground, hitting it hard with her right shoulder, rolling out of the dive and rising in front of them. The maneuver had taken her out of the line of sight with the Alfa, minimizing the risk that a stray bullet would puncture the shell and hit Garin while he was unable to defend himself.

“Do you really want to die out here, boys?” she called, hoping to strike a chord of fear inside them. It came down to who they feared the most—her with the otherworldly blade in her hand, the devil they didn’t know, or their leader, the devil they most definitely did.

She was answered by a spray of bullets.

“You’re slow learners, aren’t you?”

More gunfire.

She moved fast, scrambling across the gravel. Bullets tore up the ground around her feet. Shots plunged into a tree beside her, splintering the bark.

Too close for comfort.

She moved between the trees, using them to conceal her as she ran along the side of the parking lot. Muzzle flare and the bark of gunfire filled the night. She didn’t slow down. Bullets ripped chunks out of the trees on either side of her. Annja took one on the length of the blade, sending the bullet high and wide in a shower of sparks.

She burst out of cover, running head-on at the gunmen. Three guns became two as one of the Steyrs fell silent. The brother lost his nerve and dropped his gun, realizing that the bullets weren’t up to the task.

He turned and ran.

Annja closed the gap between her and the remaining men, her blade still slicing through the night in a deathly arc of silver. One bullet ricocheted against its length, spinning away in the direction of the shooter. It took the brother in the shoulder. His cry of pain had barely left his lips when the man beside him fell to his knees, blood leaking from a gaping wound in the middle of his chest. He pitched forward, his breathing almost nonexistent. He wasn’t going to be long for this world, and he knew it.

Another hail of bullets almost caught her unaware. The last gunman was a stubborn one.

“Okay, sunshine, you had your chance,” Annja said, dropping to her knees as a bullet took the dying man in the back of the head and put him out of his misery. She heard another staccato burst of gunfire. Then a grunt and the sound of stumbling feet followed by collapse.