The Mortality Principle (32 page)
Read The Mortality Principle Online
Authors: Alex Archer
The drumming stopped as suddenly as it started.
Two men approached the fire.
They were twenty feet apart.
There was something between them.
At first Annja didn't recognize the body for what it was, because of the way writhing shadows masked it on the bier.
They set it down beside the fire.
The circle fell silent, motionless, then one by one the dancers fell to the ground.
They lay there, eyes on the flames, ready, anticipating whatever was to come next.
Annja watched the man on the other side of the fire smear his glistening black skin with daubs of
whiteâgreat slashes across his pectorals and stomach, like wounds.
The air filled with his laughter.
The circle of followers prostrated themselves on the ground, pressing their faces into the dirt. Annja caught sight of the man on the bier's face for the first time. Her mind raced. There were two possibilities here, one, he was a corpse they were trying to resurrect, the other that he was a sacrifice.
She couldn't just stand there and let them murder himâbut that assumed he was alive to be murdered, which was far from guaranteed.
She tried to make out any signs of life, knowing that even if he was alive they'd almost certainly drugged him to keep him calm as they ended his life. Unless he was another fanatic eager to go into the flames or whatever else was about to happen. She was outnumbered twelve to one. She'd fought against much worse odds than that and come out on top.
The painted man brandished a silver knife for his congregation to see.
Annja could
feel
the collective intake of breath at the sight of it.
He raised the knife, holding it high above his head, breathing fast and hard, nostrils flared as he prepared to plunge it into the body's heartâ
When the silence was broken by the blaring wail of an American pop song. Damn. She'd meant to change her ring tone for months, but had never gotten around to it.
Annja tapped the earbud Garin had given her so she could operate hands free.
She was quick, but not quick enough to stop the young singer from doing her thing, loudly.
“This isn't a good time,” she whispered, not taking her eyes off the man on the bier.
It was too much to hope that no one had heard the song, or that they were so out of it under the influence of whatever they were feeling that they just assumed it was part of the ritual. But one by one heads began to turn in her direction.
“Annja,” the voice said, filling up the inside of her head. She'd never get used to how weird it felt having someone's voice piped directly into her ear. “Got a second? I've got news.”
It was Doug.
“Not really,” she answered, this time a little louder than a whisper. She wasn't sure if her voice would carry all the way back to New York. Telepathy would have been better, but sans some amazing psychic breakthrough in the next few seconds, whispering was the best shot she'd got at remaining hidden.
The ringleader grunted and howled, leveling the knife dead between the center of Annja's eyes.
The whole get-involved-or-don't decision had just been taken out of her hands.
She could charge in amongst them or turn and run.
It didn't matter which; what she couldn't do was stay where she was. Her cover was blown. This wasn't about a story. Right now it was about getting out of there alive.
“Can you hear me?” Doug said again. “Annja? It's great news. They've had a change of heart upstairs. At least for now. I've argued and fought for us, and you're going to love me.”
Annja shook her head, trying to focus on the mass of bodies rushing towards her. Only one had a weapon that she could see, but the madness in the eyes of the horde was
more than a match of any brain-hungry frenzy. With one hand she reached into the otherwhere, feeling the familiar grip of her sword begin to solidify in her hand as her fingers closed around it. She savored the adrenaline rush as her blood pumped hard through her veins. This was what she lived for. Not the show. The show was her identity out in the real world, but this was who she really was.
In a single fluid movement she drew Saint Joan's blade into existence and held it at the ready to fend off the charge of blood-crazy fanatics racing toward her.
It wasn't Joan's blade, she thought to herself, not anymore. It was hers. All hers.
“They picked up the back six, so we've had a reprieve, Annja. Now we've just got to come up with six shows that knock their socks off. Think you can come up with a killer concept or six?”
Annja barely took the news in.
She had more important things to deal with, like getting out of this mess without harming twelve people.
She gripped the sword with both hands.
There was an undeniable madness in the eyes of the people running at her, but there was something else beyond that, something more powerful: fear.
Beyond them the painted man still stood over the victim or sacrifice.
The body lay motionless on the bier.
“What's going on, Annja? I thought you'd be happy?”
“I am happy,” Annja said as she swung at the first of the men to reach her. “I'm delirious with joy.” The flat of the blade slammed into his upper arm hard enough to have him crying out and spinning away in pain as he clutched at the numb and useless limb. “This is what I sound like when I'm happy, Doug.” The next attacker
fared no better. She was laughing as she drove the third to his knees with a hammering blow from the sword's pommel crunching against the side of his head.
“Are you at the gym? It sounds like you're working out.”
“Something like that,” Annja said as a third man crumpled to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut. She had no wish to kill any of these unarmed people, just neutralize them, and as long as they only had their fists to fight with she was happy to put them out of action as opposed to out of their misery.
“Oh, okay, well, look, when you're done doing whatever it is you're doing, swing by the office, would you? I think this calls for a celebration.”
“I can do that,” she said, “but it might be a while. I'm not exactly in the neighborhood.”
“Where are you?”
“Haiti.”
There was a pause at the other end of the line. “Chasing a story?”
“Something like that,” Annja said, deciding against elaborating. The less Doug knew, the better when it came to her other life. “It's not as glamorous as it sounds, believe me.”
The man with the knife gave a cry of ecstasy.
“Oh, it soundsâ¦pretty interesting whatever it is,” Doug said, having obviously heard the cry.
The man raised the blade again, gritting his teeth, poised to plunge it downwards.
The crowd of bodies stopped surging around her, the seven still on their feet turned back toward him, seemingly no longer interested in their uninvited guest.
For the first time Annja got a good look at the man lying on the bier.
He turned his face toward her and offered Annja a rueful smile.
“Garin!”
The painted man's knife moved inexorably downwards.
“What's going on?” Doug asked. “Annja? What's happening?”
There was no way Annja was going to get to Garin in time, even if the crowd parted like the Red Sea to let her through.
Instead of fighting against them, Annja launched herself into the air, planting herself on the back of the man in front of her before she kicked off, higher, her sword sweeping through the air in a silver arc of moonlight as she hurled it at the chanting man.
Her aim was true.
The blade turned through the air in slow motion.
For a heartbeat the world stood still.
Annja felt herself falling back to the ground. She held out her hand for the sword, not trying to break her fall. She landed on one knee, looking up in time to see the point of the blade pierce the chanting man's throat and open a second bloody mouth for him in the instant before he would have plunged his own blade between Garin's ribs.
A moment later the sword was back in her hand, slick with the dead fanatic's blood.
The silence in the clearing was eerier than the chanting before it had been.
“Okay, look, I can tell you're not paying attention, so I'll let you get on with it.”
“It is good news, Doug. I appreciate everything you've done for me down the years, you do know that, don't you?”
“Careful, it almost sounds like you like me.”
“You know that of all the men I know called Doug you're my favorite one,” Annja said, pushing her way through the last of the confused onlookers. Now that the head priest or whatever he was had been silenced, none of them seemed to know what was going on around them.
“Sarcasm. That's more like it. If you kept being nice to me it'd only go to my head.”
Somehow, impossibly, the painted man reared up in front of her. He'd been dead, she was absolutely sure of it, but even as she slashed out instinctively with her sword and took his head clean from his shoulders, she knew that there was absolutely
nothing
behind his eyes. The painted man's head hit the grass and rolled toward the flames.
“Wouldn't want you losing your head or anything,” Annja said, bleakly.
She reached Garin.
The knife lay on his chest. There was a pool of blood around it, but no sign of any wound. But there was so much blood. So much.
One eye opened and looked up at her before a smile crept across his lips.
“You know, I'd begun to think for a minute you weren't going to turn up,” Garin said.
“And miss out on all this fun in the sun? Never.”
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781460385500
The Mortality Principle
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Steven Savile for his contribution to this work.
Copyright © 2015 by Worldwide Library
First edition September 2015
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.
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