King's Crusade (Seventeen) Read online

  An hour after they had started to photograph and record the provenance and association of the various elements within the cave, a voice suddenly interrupted the reverent hush that had fallen across the group.

  ‘What’s that on the floor?’ asked one of the scientists.

  They stopped what they were doing and stared at where the woman was pointing. Her boots had disturbed the dirt between the two pillars in the center of the room. A faint impression was apparent between the grains of dust.

  ‘That looks like another inscription,’ said Goodwin, alarm raising the pitch of his voice. ‘Everybody stand still!’

  They froze.

  ‘Can you see any other markings on the floor around you?’ said Goodwin anxiously.

  Several minutes passed while the team inspected the ground. Slowly, one ‘No,’ after another began to echo around the cave.

  Goodwin sagged. ‘Good. Step back carefully, Patricia. Let me take a closer look.’

  Reznak stood over the professor while the latter lay on the floor and carefully cleared the indentation with a fine brush. It soon became apparent that the floor engraving was not Sumerian, nor was it derived from any of the other cuneiform languages. Instead, it seemed to be a unique, triangular-shaped design that had been chiseled into the epicenter of the space between the pillars. The immortal wondered briefly what had stood in that exact spot in the cave above, where he had observed the small rectangular imprint between the larger tombs. As the details of the motif were slowly revealed, his eyes widened, and a shiver raced down his spine.

  When the entire etching finally lay exposed under the glare of the projection lights, Reznak could no longer deny the evidence before his own eyes. Carved into the floor of the cave was a large trishula.

  It looked identical to the marking he had discovered on a little girl’s neck exactly three hundred and ten years previously.

  For several seconds, the immortal felt too stunned to breathe. When air finally left his lungs in a harsh exhale, Reznak knew his life would never be the same again. In this one day, not only had he finally uncovered one of the greatest secrets in the history of the immortal races, he had also come a step closer to solving the second biggest enigma of his existence to date: the mysterious origin of the little girl who had come to mean so much to him.

  Moments later, the contents of the clay pots were finally revealed. Several of the scientists paled and rushed out of the cave, heaving as they did so. The chill coursing through Reznak’s veins turned to ice as he stared inside the ancient containers.

  The sun was low in the sky when the Crovir immortal finally emerged from the tunnel and climbed the wall of the canyon. He stopped at the summit of the rise and watched blindly while the orange orb sank toward the purple horizon. A dozen questions swarmed his mind, the most pressing of which concerned the identity of the unknown tomb raiders. However unpleasant the thought, he had to consider the possibility that someone on his team had betrayed him.

  Reznak reached for his cell phone and started to dial a number. He hesitated before canceling the call. He needed more information before he could talk to her.

  The sooner he got the cuneiform scriptures analyzed, the better. The only way he trusted this to be done in complete secrecy was if he transported the entire second cave and its contents to his main research facility in Europe. It would be a difficult but not impossible task. He was on the phone making the arrangements before he even reached the Jeep.

  On the ride back to Aswan, Reznak got a call that would put half of his best-laid plans on hold. Agatha Vellacrus, the leader of the Crovirs, had finally made her move.

  The battle to avert a second immortal war had begun.

  Though the cave was eventually excavated and moved to Europe, Reznak did not get to the clay pot artifacts and the scriptures on the walls for another fortnight, during which time the entire face of the immortal societies had changed. Following the death of Agatha Vellacrus and her only surviving son and successor at the hands of an army of Bastian and Crovir allies, he found himself in the unenviable position of being promoted to temporary Head of the Order of Crovir Hunters and became, for all intents and purposes, the leader of the Crovirs.

  A week after he started his analysis of the data from the cave, Reznak called Victor Dvorsky, one of his closest friends and the new Head of the Order of Bastian Hunters. In between reorganizing their respective immortal societies, the two friends met up in the Crovir’s research lab to discuss the astonishing findings from the Eastern Desert cave. Reznak then asked his Bastian friend for the biggest favor of their relationship to date. After much deliberation, Dvorsky eventually accepted and provided him with the biological sample he had requested: a drop of blood from an extraordinary immortal whose very existence had determined the course and outcome of the recent immortal battle. A few days later, Reznak had the answers he had been looking for.

  He called Dvorsky again, this time to arrange a meeting with that very special immortal. Finally, before he left Europe for the States, he spoke to the woman whose existence he sensed was undeniably linked to the oldest secret in immortal history.

  ‘Hi, Alexa? We need to talk.’

  Chapter Two

  December 2010.

  California. USA.

  The wintry sun beat relentlessly upon the barren wasteland of the Mojave Desert as a cold wind coursed through the valleys and canyons of the National Preserve. It shook the Yucca palms and Juniper trees that covered the arid terrain and whistled through clusters of mesquite and creosote bushes, disturbing the lizards and snakes that lazed within the shelter of the scrub brush. As it danced over the vast sand dunes that dominated the landscape, the wind caused a low booming noise to echo against the foothills of the mountains.

  Two thousand feet above the desert floor, Alexa King stood motionless on a ledge on the side of a cliff. A short distance to her left, a red-tailed hawk watched her curiously from its rocky perch. The bird of prey seemed strangely unaffected by her presence; it had yet to let out a fierce, rasping cry to indicate its displeasure at her intrusion of its territory.

  Feet planted firmly apart and hands hanging loosely at her sides, she stared unblinkingly through her skydiving goggles at the bright landscape before her. Strapped to the back of the white, bespoke, nylon cordura and spandex wing-suit she wore was a small parachute. Beneath it, her custom-made body holster held her two stainless steel Sig Sauer P229 pistols and her twin sai daggers.

  The red-tailed hawk cocked its head to the north. A second later, Alexa picked up the low-pitched hum of an approaching aircraft. She glanced at the Timex on her left wrist. The target was on time; from her covert surveillance over the last two weeks, she knew he would have left the Las Vegas airport exactly forty minutes ago on his way to Palm Springs to make the drop. She started the chronograph on the watch, reached behind her back, and slid the sais out of their sheaths.

  Half a minute passed. The aircraft’s engine grew louder. Her watch beeped.

  Alexa took off toward the edge of the ledge and jumped just as a white Cessna 172 Skyhawk with a red fuselage and tail shot past the curve of the mountain to her right. The aircraft was around five years old and registered to one Abraham McIntyre.

  As she dropped toward the desert floor, she spread her arms and legs to open the wings of the suit, then turned and dived after the plane. She had practiced the jump a dozen times in the past few days; there was little margin for error. If the Cessna was traveling at a slower speed than it had the previous four times she had timed it, she would overshoot in front of the propeller and be torn to shreds.

  As it turned out, McIntyre was a creature of habit. He kept the aircraft at a cruising speed of a hundred and twenty-two knots and maintained a steady altitude.

  Less than fifteen seconds after she cleared the edge of the cliff, she glided to the rear deck of t
he Cessna and stabbed the sai daggers into the metal of the fuselage.

  The impact jarred her wrists and the wind drag nearly tore her off the aircraft. The plane pitched backward and rolled, offering her a dizzying view of the desert far below when her body tilted with it. The engine roared as the pilot struggled to level the Cessna.

  She unclipped the wings of the suit and renewed her grip on the daggers. Moving the blades one at a time, she pulled herself toward the front of the aircraft and dropped down the trailing edge of the left wing. Steadying her feet against the strut and the wheel fairing of the landing gear, she sheathed her left sai and yanked the cabin door open.

  The pilot stared at her, goggle-eyed.

  ‘Abraham McIntyre, in the name of the Crovir First Council, I hereby arrest you on charges of—’ she started to say.

  McIntyre blinked and reached for the gun on the seat next to him.

  Alexa twisted to the left and narrowly avoided the bullet that whizzed past her chest. Frowning, she gripped the support strut, slipped the right sai in her holster, and pulled a knife from a scabbard on her thigh. McIntyre blanched when she leaned inside the aircraft and cut his seatbelt. She grabbed him by the neck of his shirt. He wriggled desperately in her grip and aimed the gun at her head.

  Alexa raised her right knee and hook-kicked the weapon from his hand. A cry of pain left his lips when the gun fell from his fingers. She ignored it and heaved backwards. McIntyre screamed, knuckles whitening on the edge of his seat.

  A grim smile crossed her lips. She let go of the wing strut and fell away from the plane.

  His shriek of terror was lost in the wind as they dropped like lead weights toward the distant ground. Alexa tightened her arm around the man’s neck and wrapped her legs around his waist before reaching behind her back and pulling the activation handle on her chute. It deployed swiftly behind her.

  McIntyre choked at the sudden deceleration.

  She reached for the steering toggles and guided them smoothly toward the desert floor. Halfway down, the red-tailed hawk dove past them with a shrill cry, likely on the trail of an unseen prey. She followed the bird with her eyes until it disappeared from view.

  Ten feet from the ground, Alexa let go of McIntyre. He hit the dirt with a dull thud and lay there, groaning. She landed a few steps ahead of him, steadied herself, and shrugged the chute harness off her back. She strode back toward the prostrate figure and stopped a couple of inches from his head. She unclipped her GPS device from her hip and studied it.

  They had touched down exactly a mile and a half from her rental Jeep.

  A minute passed. Alexa stared at the man lying still at her feet. ‘Get up,’ she ordered coldly.

  McIntyre’s hand suddenly snaked out and gripped her booted ankle. He yanked on her leg and tried to pull her to the ground. Her weight barely shifted. A sigh left her lips. She removed one of her Sigs from its holster and shot him in the hand.

  His howl of agony reverberated against the nearby sand dunes. McIntyre scrambled wildly to his knees and gripped his bleeding appendage. ‘You bitch!’ he growled, glaring at her from under the layer of grime that covered his face.

  The gun shifted in her hand. ‘Unless you want to lose your right eye, I suggest you get up and start to walk,’ she said in a dull monotone. He stared into the barrel of the Sig and gritted his teeth before rising unsteadily to his feet.

  Ten minutes before they reached the Jeep, Alexa heard the distant boom of an explosion and saw a flare of smoke rise on the horizon. The Cessna had crashed into the desert.

  She had parked the vehicle in the shadow of a giant boulder and camouflaged it with netting to reduce its visibility from the sky. She handcuffed a disgruntled McIntyre to the passenger door, changed out of the wing-suit, and climbed behind the wheel.

  Less than an hour after she had jumped off the side of the cliff, Alexa guided the Jeep onto Interstate Fifteen and drove toward Las Vegas. As the vehicle quickly ate the distance that separated them from the city, she glanced at the man next to her.

  McIntyre slouched in his seat and alternated between scowling at her and staring worriedly at the landscape outside the window. An occasional wince crossed his face when he moved his injured hand.

  She had wrapped a bandage around it; she did not want him bleeding all over the rental.

  ‘Who the hell are you anyway?’ he finally asked when they were thirty miles out from the city.

  Alexa stared at the road ahead. ‘That’s on a need-to-know basis.’

  ‘Look, if this is about money, I can—’ McIntyre started. He stopped abruptly at her expression.

  ‘Don’t insult my intelligence,’ she said.

  He lapsed into silence and gnawed at his lips.

  She studied him for several seconds before turning her attention to the highway.

  Abraham McIntyre was a thief and a fool. A clever thief, granted, but still a fool. He had to be if he thought he could pull a fast one on the Crovir First Council.

  McIntyre was an engineer for one of the most lucrative oil companies in the world. It was owned by a Crovir noble who also happened to be a member of the First Council. Not content with his generous salary, McIntyre started embezzling money from the company. When an accountant finally picked up an irregularity in the balance sheets a year ago, it became apparent that someone had been siphoning cash from one of the corporation’s subsidiary funds. The trail eventually led to McIntyre through a series of anonymous postal box companies.

  It turned out the immortal was even greedier than originally thought. In an attempt to make his ill-earned fortune grow, he set up business with a drug cartel in South America, where he was based for his job. Twice a week, he would fly from Vegas to Palm Springs to make a drop to one of the cartel’s principal cocaine distributors in California. The money he earned was then wired to one of his many foreign bank accounts.

  At that stage, the oil company should have notified the FBI’s Financial Crimes Section and the DEA.

  But that was not the way immortals carried out their affairs. Although they adhered to most of the rules and regulations of human society in order to preserve the secrets of their race, they had a whole set of their own laws to abide by, most of which stemmed from the very inception of the immortal societies. In cases like these, immortal decrees overrode those made by humans. And immortals firmly believed in obtaining their pound of flesh. Or, in this case, a life for a sin.

  In the two weeks that she had been watching him, Alexa had come up with six ways to capture and dispose of McIntyre. Five of them would have involved injuring or killing the bodyguards from the security firm he had hired to protect him; although he was an immortal, McIntyre was no fool when it came to investing in his personal protection. However discreet she was, the death of humans would have brought attention from the Federal police, something she was keen to avoid. After all, it was the reason she had been assigned this task.

  Dealing with an immortal embezzler was a job that would ordinarily have been handled by the Order of Crovir Hunters. But the Hunters, while excellent at what they did, sometimes left traces. McIntyre needed to disappear off the face of the Earth, as if he had never existed.

  That was her area of expertise.

  The sixth method was the one she had finally chosen. The only time the immortal was truly alone was when he made the flight to Palm Springs; he never took a bodyguard with him on his trips.

  By the time the authorities and McIntyre’s business partners realized his body was not in the remains of the burnt-out Cessna, he would be long gone.

  She exited the freeway at Junction 27 and took the St. Rose Parkway. Two miles later, she turned right and headed for the Henderson Executive airport. She drove past the main terminal and administrative buildings and parked the Jeep by one of the private corporate hangars.

/>   McIntyre tensed when he saw the Learjet next to it. The color drained from his face as four Crovir Hunters stepped out of the shadow of the plane. Alexa pulled the cursing immortal from the vehicle and dragged him toward the group of silent men.

  Frank Schmidt, the Crovir team leader, was tall and broad-shouldered, with a chiseled face lifted straight from a Roman bust. Alexa knew him from the brief time she had spent in the Order. He was one of a handful of Hunters who did not fear her.

  A breeze ruffled Schmidt’s suit and revealed the faint outline of the holster under his arm as he walked toward them. ‘You’re dead on time,’ he said with a faint grin. He glanced at McIntyre’s hand. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He got frisky,’ said Alexa. McIntyre glowered at her.

  Schmidt raised his eyebrows. His expression indicated that a man would have to be mad to attempt any such thing around her. His gaze ran over her figure briefly. ‘You look good,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Alexa.

  The Hunters behind Schmidt shifted slightly. She glanced impassively at their troubled expressions.

  She had long been aware of the rumors that circulated about her in the upper echelons of the Crovir Councils and the Order. She was a cold and calculating bitch without feelings. She would just as soon kill you as look at you. She wasn’t a team player. She ate raw meat and drank the blood of her lovers. The gossip was wild and fanciful. Some of it was true.

  Alexa knew she had bruised many egos over the centuries. She was faster, stronger, and deadlier than any Hunter working for the Order today, and was without a doubt the best covert agent the First Council had had access to in the last three hundred years. She thought this without pride or pleasure. It was a simple fact. She was also the only Crovir operative who had yet to suffer a death.