The Dragon's Mark

“It’s Roux’s birthday?”

“I just said that, didn’t I?”

Yes, yes, he had. Despite Roux’s long life, Annja knew that he wasn’t the type to celebrate birthdays, so that only increased rather than eased her suspicions.

“You’re going to throw Roux a birthday party?” She couldn’t mask the incredulity in her voice.

Garin had apparently lost his patience with her for he let loose a stream of curses that could have burned the hair off a pirate’s chest.

Annja waited him out and then said, “Okay. I’m in. When is it?”

Still grumbling, he named a date only three days away.

“Nothing like giving a girl time to think it over,” she said.

“What? Like you’ve got something else on your social calendar?” Garin shot back and from his tone Annja knew he was rather pleased with himself for that one. Before she could think of a retort, he went on. “I have tickets reserved in your name on the 9:00 p.m. flight out of Kennedy on the twelfth. My driver will pick you at DeGaulle, take you to Roux’s for the party and drive you back to your hotel afterward.”

And with that, he hung up.

“Garin? Garin!”

Hanging up the phone, she went back to putting away the groceries. While doing so she glanced at her calendar. The bare white spaces stared back at her. Well, what did you expect? she asked herself. Given your lifestyle, it is amazing you have any friends at all.

She had to admit, she’d never been one to stay in one place for long before she’d taken up Joan’s sword, never mind afterward. If she wasn’t headed off to some remote spot to film a new episode of Chasing History’s Monsters, the cable television show she cohosted, then she was off volunteering at some dig site in the back end of nowhere just to satisfy her love of history and her need to feel the thrill of discovery. That didn’t leave much time for friendships, never mind romantic entanglements longer than a few days in length.

While she occasionally wondered what it would be like to have a normal life, when she really got down to it, she found that she didn’t mind all the craziness. After all, boring was the last thing you could call her life.

The party was on the thirteenth. On the sixteenth she was due in studio to shoot some green-screen work for her next episode and to wade through the piles of footage she’d brought back from her last trip. Both would be necessary to cut the raw material into a show worth watching, and while she knew the guys in the editing room could do it without her, she preferred to keep an eye on them to help tone down the inevitable “suggestions” her producer, Doug Morrell, was constantly trying to fill their ears with. Doug was a good guy, but he’d be just as happy to have a show revolving around blood-sucking alien chupacabras as he would some ancient civilization most people had never heard of. He’d once gone so far as to produce and distribute a memorial video of her final moments when she’d lost touch with him during a tsunami in India. That fact that she’d called in shortly thereafter, clearly alive and well, had only added fuel to his marketing efforts and had him envisioning a second volume highlighting her “miraculous” survival. If she’d been closer at the time she might have strangled him herself.

So she’d make the party, but had to be sure to be back in New York by the sixteenth, come hell or high water.

ANNJA WAS FIVE FEET TEN inches tall with chestnut hair and amber-green eyes. She had an athlete’s build, with smooth rounded muscles and curves in all the right places. Dressed as she was in a pair of jeans, leather boots and a lightweight tank top, she knew she probably made quite a sight rushing helter-skelter through the airport with her long hair flying out behind her, but it just couldn’t be helped. She’d gotten absorbed in research and hadn’t left herself enough time. If she didn’t make it to the gate on time, Garin would never let her forget it.

As was her usual luck, after convincing her cab driver to set new land-speed records in making it to the airport and then dashing through the terminal after clearing security, she reached the gate only to discover that her flight had been delayed due to a mechanical problem. At least the ticket was for first class, which let her pass the time in the executive lounge while she waited. Once she did board the plane almost an hour later, she popped on her iPod, stretched out and slept through most of the trip, determined to arrive ready to enjoy Roux’s party.

Garin had a driver and car waiting, just as he’d said he would, and as she relaxed in the backseat and she watched the Paris streets roll by out her window, she had to admit that the whole thing made her feel a bit special.

Until she remembered just who was waiting for her on the other end.

It’s for Roux, she reminded herself, for Roux.

As they drove, she thought about the circumstances that were bringing the three of them—Roux, Annja and Garin—together again. Despite her misgivings, she had to admit to being surprised, pleasantly so, that Garin was going out of his way for Roux; that wasn’t something Garin was particularly known for. Ruthlessness, arrogance, a sense of entitlement ten miles wide—yes, he had more than his share of those qualities. But doing something just because it would make another person happy? Not so much.

Still, anyone could turn over a new leaf and in the past several months it was obvious that Garin was trying, in his own way, to smooth over some of the damage from the past, so she supposed she had to give him credit. It wasn’t easy for anyone to change, least of all someone so set in their ways as Garin Braden.

The party they were throwing for Roux was, of course, a surprise. Or rather, Garin was throwing the party, with Annja and Henshaw, Roux’s butler and majordomo, as the only guests. It pained Annja to think that after such a long life they were the only people Roux could claim as friends, but she didn’t consider it too deeply lest she see the glaring similarities with her own life.

That the party was all Garin’s idea was equally unusual, given the history between the two men. After all, they’d tried to kill each other on more than one occasion and no doubt would try again at some point in the future. On any given day they could go from friends to enemies in the space of a heartbeat. Still, there was a bond between them that transcended such petty squabbles, and as fate would have it, Annja had become part of their inner circle.

After all, who better to understand just what it meant to carry the sword that had belonged to Joan of Arc than the two men who had once been responsible for protecting Joan herself from the hands of her enemies? The same mystical force that had preserved the sword and ultimately brought it into Annja’s possession had also given them their extended life span. It was also part of the discord between them. Neither of them knew what would happen should the sword somehow come to harm. Would they at last be able to live out the rest of their natural lives, free from the influence of the sword, or would time suddenly catch up to them, exacting its toll then and there for all the years they’d escaped its grasp? They didn’t know and so, as a result, they had different ideas about how to handle the situation. Roux wanted the sword to remain with Annja, its chosen bearer, while Garin had made it clear he felt the sword should be locked away and protected. If that was even possible.

Annja shifted her attention from the scenery outside the car to the sword itself. It rested there in the otherwhere, just as it always did, glimmering faintly as it waited for her to call it forth with just a thought. For a moment she was tempted, for she loved to feel its weight in her hand, loved the sensation it gave her as she carried it forth into battle, but her good sense reasserted itself before she did so; having a huge broadsword suddenly appear in the back of the limousine probably wouldn’t be a good thing for the upholstery, never mind the driver’s sense of reality.

It was enough that it was there, waiting for her, and that she could claim it when necessary. She’d had to do so more times than she could count since taking possession of it and she knew that there would be plenty of other such situations in the future. It had become a part of her and she could no more give it up now than she could marry a pig farmer and retire to the country.

The celebration was being held at Roux’s estate outside of Paris and it took them about half an hour to reach their destination.

Roux’s house was huge, so huge that the word home just didn’t seem to do it justice. Palace might have been better. Ivy clung to the stone walls and helped the structure blend into the trees that surrounded it. It butted up against a hill and the overall effect was as if the house itself were a part of the natural environment around it, and from past experience Annja knew that the design was deliberate. Roux was a man who liked his privacy and went to some lengths to see that it remained protected.

The driver must have called ahead, as Garin was waiting for her on the front steps when they pulled up. Standing with him was Henshaw.

“Welcome back, Ms. Creed,” Henshaw said, giving her a small nod of welcome as she stepped from the car.

She grinned. That was Henshaw, positively overwhelming with his emotional displays, she thought.

“Good to see you,” she told him. She turned her attention to his companion. “Hello, Garin.”

“Annja,” he answered just as solemnly, but his eyes twinkled with mischief behind his unruffled exterior.

With her ever-present backpack slung over her shoulder, Annja entered the house with Garin while Henshaw got her overnight bag from the trunk. She could already imagine his scowl as he saw the size of her suitcase. She wasn’t the type to travel with more than the few basic items she needed, while he was a firm believer in a woman’s right to be prepared for anything and to travel with a wardrobe large enough to let her do so, especially a woman as attractive as Annja. He’d never come right out and said so—the sun would stop revolving around the earth when that happened—but she’d managed to piece together the gist of his viewpoint from the few comments and frowns he’d made to her over the years.

The knowledge that he’d scowl all the more should he discover that she intentionally packed as light as she could just to tease him when coming here made her laugh aloud.

Maybe this was going to be a fun three days, after all.

Annja stepped into the foyer, with its vaulted ceiling and Italian marble floors. No matter how many time she visited, it never ceased to amaze her at the luxury Roux had surrounded himself with over the years. He seemed to be trying to forget the long, hard years he’d served in the field with nothing more than his arms and armor for material possessions and she had to admit he was doing an excellent job of it.

Garin led her through the lower floor to Roux’s personal study, one of the largest rooms in the entire house. It was two stories tall and stuffed to the gills with shelves full of books, artifacts and artwork. Stacks of paper streamers rested on a nearby table, along with a pile of balloons. A tank of helium gas stood beside it.

“Roux is out at a high-stakes poker game for the afternoon,” Garin told her. “Henshaw will be picking him up around dinnertime, which means we only have a couple of hours to get the place decorated and…”

He trailed off at seeing her expression. “What?” he growled.

Annja laughed; she couldn’t help it. Imagining him with those blue and yellow streamers in his huge hands was just too much. It was so not Garin. From cold-blooded killer to interior decorator—would wonders never cease?

When at last she could find her voice again, she said, “I’m sorry, Garin, really, I am. I just never expected you to go to so much trouble for Roux and the change is a bit, um, unexpected. Nice, but unexpected.”

He accepted her apology with a shrug and the two of them got to work. By the time Henshaw came in an hour later to check on them, they had finished strewing paper streamers throughout the room, even draping them on the massive stone sarcophagus that occupied one corner and wrapping them around the stuffed and mounted corpse of an Old West gunfighter that stood in the other, turning him from a cigar-store Indian-style display to a blue-and-yellow mummy. They were getting started on tying the balloons together into bunches.

Henshaw gave the room a once-over, his only discernible reaction the slight raising of an eyebrow as he took in the steamerwrapped gunfighter in the corner. Turning back to his partners in crime, he said, “I’m off to get Mr. Roux. I shall return in approximately one hour. We shall dine shortly after that.”

Garin had several phone calls to make so Annja spent the time wandering through Roux’s house, looking at the variety of artifacts that he had on display. While she might not agree with his methods of acquisition, since he had several items that were on current lists of objects either stolen or banned from being removed from their countries of origin, she could appreciate the beauty of the collection itself. She was examining a vase that had apparently been discovered in the remains of Knossos, the king’s palace on the island of Crete, when her phone chirped. Pulling it out of her pocket, she saw that she had a text message from Garin.

They’re here, was all it said.

She dashed back through the halls, slipping through the main foyer only seconds before Henshaw and Roux entered the house, and joined Garin in the study. There they waited for the guest of honor.

“Surprise!” they shouted when Henshaw led Roux into the room.

The older man started, then scowled first at the two of them and then back over his shoulder at Henshaw.

“Traitor!” he said, “I suppose you’re in on this, too, then? What are they doing here?”

Henshaw gave one of his rare smiles. “Celebrating your birthday, of course, sir.”

Garin smiled easily, ignoring Roux’s brusque manner. “Did you think we’d forget?”

“It’s not a question of forgetting. You’ve never bothered with my birthday before. What’s so different this year?”

But he accepted the surprise good-naturedly and even began to enjoy himself as the evening wore on. They ate together in the dining room down the hall—braised duck in a pear chutney, which Annja thought was exquisite—then returned to the study for drinks and conversation.

Garin and Roux had lived so long and seen so much that Annja could listen to them for hours. Roux was entertaining them all with a tale of the time he’d slipped inside a royal palace for a rendezvous with a visiting princess when what sounded like gunfire split the night air outside.

“Did you hear that?” Annja asked.

The other three had for they were already in motion. A lifetime spent in dangerous situations had fine-tuned their senses, including Henshaw’s, and they all recognized the sound of guns when they heard them. Annja did, too; she was just surprised to be hearing them at Roux’s secluded estate.

Henshaw went straight to the computer sitting on a nearby desk. As he settled into the seat in front of it an alarm began to sound throughout the house. He silenced it with the touch of a button and then pressed another. A section of the wall to the left of where he sat split apart as a result, revealing sixteen security monitors in four rows of four. Each of them showed a different part of the manor grounds and on several of them Annja saw gray shapes racing across the lawn, firing at the hired security force as they came.

The hiss of hydraulics captured Annja’s attention and she turned away from the monitors to see both Roux and Garin waiting impatiently for the vault at the back of the room to finish opening. Annja hadn’t been inside that room since her first visit to the estate but remembered the treasure trove of multiple currencies and weapons it contained.

Roux could have armed and financed a small private army with what was in room.

It was the weapons stored in the vault that her two companions were going for. Garin armed himself with a pair of heavy pistols while Roux took a rifle for himself and then carried another over to Henshaw.

Garin held up a pistol for Annja. “Here, take this.”

She shook her head. “Thanks but I’m already carrying all the weaponry I need.”

“Suit yourself,” Garin replied, then joined the others at the security station where Roux was trying without much success to reach the head of his security detail on the radio.

When he was unable to get a response, Henshaw gestured to the escape tunnel at the back of the vault. “If we leave now, sir, there will still be time to get you off the estate.” Annja knew that it led up to the third floor and from there out onto the slope of the hill against which Roux’s mansion had been built. A Jeep waited on the road above, ready to take the master of the house to safety at a moment’s notice. Once before, when the estate had come under attack, all four of them had used the tunnel to get to safety. It sounded like a good plan to her now.

Roux was silent for a moment, considering, and then looked over at Garin for his opinion.

The other man hefted the weapon he carried and grinned at Roux. “It’s your call, but if I were in your shoes, I’d be a little pissed. After all, it is your birthday.”

There was no missing the challenge in Garin’s answer and Annja bristled to hear it. He was practically daring Roux to make a stand! And of course, given the history between the two men, there was almost no way Roux was going to ignore that and do the right thing, which was to get the hell out of there while they still had a chance.

She was opening her mouth to advise against taking on the intruders themselves when Roux did precisely what she expected him to.

“Garin’s right. This is my home and I’ll be damned if I’m going to run like a rabbit at the first sign of trouble.”

And that was that. Annja knew any further discussion was futile. Roux had made up his mind and, being the good manservant that he was, Henshaw would carry out his instructions to the last. With it being three against one, there wasn’t even any sense in arguing.

Annja shot a murderous look in Garin’s direction, but he was studying the images on the monitor and didn’t see it. Or if he did, he chose to ignore it, which would certainly be in keeping with his usual behavior.

If something happens to Roux…

She would just have to ensure that it did not.

They quickly devised a plan that, when it came down to it, was pretty basic. The four of them would take up position inside the foyer and defend the house against anyone who tried to enter.

Annja just hoped it would work.

They left the study and quickly made their way through the house toward the front entrance. Roux led the way, followed by Henshaw and Garin, with Annja bringing up the rear. They were just passing a wide staircase that led to the second floor when Annja skidded to a halt.

The others ran on, but her attention was caught by the landing on the second floor. Her intuition was calling to her, telling her the problem was above her, on the second floor, rather than out front where the others were headed. Ever since taking possession of the sword she’d been subject to heightened senses and her intuition was just one of them. Right now it was telling her that there was a problem on the second floor, one that would come back to bite them in the ass if they didn’t deal with it right away, and she had learned to trust such instincts.

Were they too late? she wondered. Were the intruders already inside the manor house?

Leaving a potential enemy at their backs could prove disastrous, so when she shouted at the others to come back and received no response, she made the decision to check things out on her own.

Turning away from the others, Annja charged up the stairs.

3

There were six of them.

They were dressed in dark, loose-fitting outfits with hoods pulled up right around their heads and ninja masks covering the lower parts of their faces, making it impossible for her to identify them.

Five of them stood in a rough semicircle facing the door, swords in hand. The sixth stood behind the first group, watching, and Annja didn’t need to be told that this was their leader. If she was going to get some answers, Annja suspected she was going to have get past the first ranks and confront him herself.

So be it.

They didn’t give her time to think, never mind formulate a plan. No sooner had she taken it all in, then they were upon her, the first three rushing forward while the other two closed up ranks in front of their commander.

It was almost as if they had been waiting for her.

The lead swordsman was quicker than the other two, eager for the chance to confront her. As he came forward she sized him up, her mind processing a hundred tiny details in the space of an eye blink, from the position of the sword in his hands to the angle of his hips to the length of his stride.

She moved to meet him.

He struck as soon as he was in range, intending to overpower her with his strength and speed. The tip of his sword came slashing in at her side, then rose at the last second in an attempt to reach her neck.

Annja brought her own sword up in her standard two-handed grip, parried his blow and, using his momentum against him, jammed an elbow into his face as his speed prevented him from stopping in time.

There was an audible crack, blood spurted from the intruder’s nose and he dropped to the floor.

Annja kept going, moving in on the other two.

They were a bit more cautious than their comrade, splitting up and moving to either side as she continued forward. Annja knew they intended to force her to confront one of them and allow the other to strike at her exposed back, so she didn’t hesitate, choosing instead to rush the one closest to her.

Sword met sword, the blows ringing in the air, as they flew through a flurry of exchanges. From the corner of her eye Annja could see the other intruder getting ready to make a strike, so when her current foe used a horizontal strike to parry her blow, she went with the motion, pivoting on one foot and driving the other directly into her attacker’s gut, knocking him to the floor.

Even as he was falling backward, Annja was continuing the turn and bringing her sword around in a sweeping arc, taking the third attacker’s blow along its length and letting it slide harmlessly to the side. She let her momentum carry her into a full three-hundred-sixty-degree turn, swiveling sharply around to smack the intruder on the side of the skull with the flat of her blade.

He went down without a sound.

Three down, three to go, she thought.

Gunfire sounded from downstairs, indicating that Roux and the others had encountered the enemy themselves, but Annja couldn’t worry about them right now; she had her hands full.

Seeing how well their comrades had done against her, the two attackers now facing her chose a different strategy. With a sudden shout they rushed her as one, blades out and ready to strike from either side.

Annja waited until they were nearly upon her and then jumped upward with one powerful shove of her muscular legs.

The swords passed harmlessly beneath her as she somersaulted over their heads, twisting in midair to land behind them, facing their exposed backs. Her sword was already in motion as she landed on catlike feet and she slashed the backs of their legs without a second thought, taking them out of the fight.

One more…

She whirled, expecting her final opponent to be closing the distance between them while her attention was elsewhere.

That wasn’t the case.

The other man hadn’t moved.

He stood watching her, his hands held calmly together behind his back, like an instructor evaluating her performance.

“Who are you and what do you want?” Annja asked and was surprised at the depth of anger she heard in her voice.