Uncovering an ancient aristocracy and its hidden secret

Archaeologist and TV show host Annja Creed trades in her dig tools and dirty excavations for the sunny climes of Hollywood. Serving as a prop consultant for a popular TV fantasy series, Annja’s enjoying the lights, camera and much less action. Until a scrying crystal is stolen off the set...and it turns out to be something more than a prop.

The crystal, in fact, is a priceless artifact from the period of the Crusades. But in the process of recovering it, Annja discovers something far more valuable: an ancient document that could lead to the lost treasure of the Merovingian kings. Rulers of France’s oldest dynasty during the third century AD—predating even Charlemagne—the Merovingians were said to be mystic warriors, armed with the power of God.

But Annja isn’t the only one who knows about the document. And now she must face down a malevolent group that’s far too familiar with Garin, one of her closest allies. Good thing she shares far more with these mystic warrriors than even she could possibly imagine.

“Grab the crystal. Let’s go!”

Annja was happy to see that Orta was already picking up the manuscript sheets and replacing them in their protective case. Grabbing her backpack, Annja quickly shoved her gear into it and pulled it on. Orta looked at her. “There are more of these men?”

“Yes.” Annja pulled the ear-throat mic into place and clipped the walkie-talkie to the ammo belt. A deep, controlled voice spoke at the other end, demanding that Fox Six reply. She ignored the command and nodded to Orta. “You know the campus layout. Which is the quickest way out?”

“Follow me.” Orta headed to the back door.

Krauzer had the crystal wrapped in one arm like an oversize football and was reaching for the other machine pistol lying on the floor.

Taking a quick step, Annja kicked the weapon under the table and out of Krauzer’s reach.

He whirled on her, his features taut with rage and fear. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to keep Orta and me alive,” Annja said. “You’re a movie director, not a commando.”

“And you think you’re some kind of action hero?”

Annja glanced at the two unconscious attackers. “I’ve got experience with this sort of thing.”

Mystic Warrior

Alex Archer

Rogue Angel

THE LEGEND

...THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.

The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade. The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd.

Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.

Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn...

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

THE LEGEND

Prologue

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Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Bourthes, Nord-Pas-de-Calais Kingdom of the Franks 752 AD

Pepin the Younger, also called the Short behind his back, sat at the head of the large wooden table under the wheel of lighted candles and struggled to contain his anger at his “guest.”

Childeric III sat sulking at the other end of the table. Like all of the Merovingian royal family, Childeric wore his bright red hair in long, flowing locks. People often whispered that the hair contained the power of the Merovingians.

This night, Childeric didn’t look powerful. Any mystical might perhaps contained in his hair was not working to salvage his fate. Pepin had already sealed that.

The events of the past few weeks, and the knowledge of what was to become of him, had worn heavily on Childeric. In the beginning he had been hopeful, certain that he would remain king. Now those hopes had dwindled.

Like a truculent child, he sat at the table and refused to eat.

Pepin gestured with his knife. “Come, Childeric, you must eat. The road to Saint Bertin is long and wearying. You must keep up your strength.”

“Must I?” Childeric braced both his hands on the table and made as though to rise. “I am still king, and you presume to tell me what to do like I was some idiot?”

To the king’s left, his son, Theuderic, placed a restraining hand on the older man’s shoulder. “Father, do not engage him,” Theuderic whispered. “He seeks only to antagonize you.”

Pepin toyed with his knife and smiled. Death would have been easier and was probably preferable to what Pepin intended for his two prisoners.

“I will not sup with a betrayer,” Childeric said hoarsely.

“You have eaten with me on plenty of occasions before this. My lord.” Pepin waved the protest away. “We are still two men who seek to break our fast. I thought you would enjoy eating indoors for a change after the meals we have suffered upon the road. This inn is a pleasant change from the days of hard winter travel we’ve endured.”

“I am your lord! I am your king and your master. God will punish you for what you do.”

“Might I remind you that God does not favor you overmuch these days?” Pepin gestured to the papal representatives sent by Pope Zachary who were seated on the other side of the long table.

“Sacrilege. You have bought off the Greek scoundrel who pretends to listen to holy words! You cannot buy off God, you wretched creature, and you doom your eternal soul to play at such games.”

Lifting his wine goblet, Pepin drank to give himself a moment to control his anger. He focused on enjoying the power he wielded. Carefully, he replaced the goblet on the table. “For eleven years, I have toiled as mayor of the palace, caring for your household and running your kingdom while you took no note of the business affairs and trade agreements that kept our country running. You were nothing more than a figurehead, as was your father before you.

“The time has come for the true power to step forward from the shadows. I shall be crowned king, and I will rule as I have always done. Only now I shall be recognized.” Pepin glared at the man. “There is only one thing that I require from you.”

“I will give you nothing. I will fight you until my dying breath.”

Pepin shrugged. “I can ensure that release from this mortal coil is a long time in coming, with plenty of pain before.”

Theuderic spoke before his father could, and the younger man’s words cracked with fear. “What could you possibly still want from us, you monster? You have already taken all that we have.”

Childeric placed a hand against his son’s chest, perhaps afraid of the wrath Pepin would visit on him.

“In all the years I have managed your affairs, I have never found the hidden treasure of the Merovingian kings.” Pepin swirled the contents of his wine goblet.

Theuderic looked to his father in confusion. Childeric sat back in his seat and his eyes shone.

“I have listened to legends and rumors about this treasure.” Pepin wanted to remain silent, but he found he could not still his tongue. “Before me, my father, may God rest his soul, gave his life in service to your family. During all that time, he heard bits and rumors about the mysterious object, an unholy and unwholesome thing of dark magic hammered on a forge in hell, that protected the Merovingian kings from their enemies.”

“You think I will tell you?” Childeric smiled slightly.

Pepin paused to sip more wine. “I do not think such a treasure exists. Do you know what saved the Merovingian kings from the bloodthirsty Saxons? From the caliphate’s men at the Battle of Tours?” He paused, and when there was no answer forthcoming, he slapped his hand against the table. “My father did that. And he bent Frisia, Alemannia and Bavaria to his will.” He banged his fist against the table once more. “My father. Not some demon-spawned thing your family has claimed to hold captive.”

The innkeeper, a short, thin man with a long face and deep-set eyes, stepped into the dining hall. Other men stood behind the innkeeper. The scuff of their boots announced them, and the rattle of their armor and weapons gave them away.

Pepin sat for a moment, frozen in surprise that there would be any who would dare such aggression against him.

“I am sorry, my lord.” The innkeeper wrung his hands, then lurched forward as a blade burst through his chest. Blood spilled down his quivering lips as he struggled to stand. Then the soldier behind the dead man kicked the corpse forward, freeing his blade.

A dozen armored men swarmed into the dining hall. Their drawn blades flashed in the firelight.

Pepin heaved himself from his seat and freed his sword from the scabbard beside the table. He was not a gifted fighting man, but his father had trained him in the way of the sword.

Steel shrieked and bit, and the screams of dying men filled the dining hall. In mere moments, blood covered the stone floor and made footing treacherous. The attackers fought with skill and fury, but Pepin had chosen some of his best warriors to accompany him on his journey with the deposed king and the prince.

With his back nearly to the wall, Pepin blocked another swing, then reached to his waist for the long knife he carried there. He fisted it and turned aside another blow, then slid beneath the bigger man’s right arm as the heavy sword cut the air over his head. Before the man could turn, Pepin thrust his knife between the man’s ribs in the chain mail opening under his arm.

Even though the man was already dying, Pepin shoved the knife into the man’s throat and robbed him of the last few seconds of his life. Breathing hard, Pepin studied the room. Though his men had been surprised, they had recovered quickly. Corpses now littered the dining hall, and only a few of them were his soldiers.

Childeric knelt on the floor and bled profusely from his nose while two soldiers with drawn blades flanked him. The soon-to-be-deposed king swayed unsteadily and looked disoriented. Theuderic lay on the floor nearby with a sword to his throat, his eyes round with fear.

“Do you see?” Childeric gazed balefully at Pepin. “My people will never accept you as their king. They will fight for me. This night or some day later, they will kill you.”

“These men?” Pepin spit on the corpse nearest him. “These are not warriors who sought to aid you. These men were brigands hoping only to loot who they presumed to be only wealthy travelers, not soldiers. You cling to false hopes, Childeric, and it does not become you.”

“Liar!”

Pepin strode over to Childeric. The king struggled to get to his feet, but the soldiers beside him held him in check.

Pepin sheathed his sword and the clang of metal against metal suddenly filled the hall. “I grow weary of your lack of acceptance of reality.” He held the bloody knife before his prisoner. Pepin knotted a fist in Childeric’s hair. “Tell me what I want to know and I will suffer you to live.”

Childeric glared up at him. “Never. You will live in fear of the Merovingian power coming back to strike you down.”

“Father!” Theuderic tried to push away the sword holding him in place. Instead, the blade bit into his unprotected chest and he lay there helplessly.

“I will not live in fear. And I will have your secrets. If they exist.”

Childeric locked his eyes on Pepin’s. “For everything, runt, there is a time. God made this so. You will regret everything you have done.”

For just a moment as he looked into the other man’s gaze, Pepin felt the cold breath of fear.

1

Present day

Annja Creed sat braced in the passenger seat of the burnt-orange Lamborghini and tried to divide her attention between the GPS screen on the dashboard and the late-afternoon traffic in West Los Angeles as they peeled around yet another corner. Traffic flashed by, though the number of cars was sparser than she had thought it would be. Los Angeles gridlocked a lot, and the streets were often choked with stalled vehicles.

Of course, their luck could end around the next corner, which was coming up much too quickly. She pulled her chestnut hair back and tied it in a ponytail. Dressed in charcoal pants, a dark green pullover and a short-waisted jacket, Annja had been prepared to spend the day at the Hollywood lot where she was currently consulting on a movie.

Riding kamikaze through LA traffic hadn’t been on her itinerary.

The voice streaming from the GPS was a steamy contralto Annja hadn’t heard before, but it sounded familiar and comforting.

“Steven, you need to make a right turn in one hundred feet.”

The voice had to be a custom package. That was something Steven Krauzer would want as a member of Hollywood’s elite director-producers.

“Turn now, Steven.” The car slung around the corner and the tires shrieked and slipped wildly before grabbing traction again. Annja’s seat belt tightened around her. She was safe, for the moment, but certainly not comfortable. Especially with an insane person behind the wheel.

On his best days, Steven Krauzer was believed to be not quite in touch with the real world. This wasn’t a good day at all.

Several more car horns blared in protest as the Lamborghini powered through the turn, holding contact with the street through what had to be the thinnest layer of rubber. A cab loomed before them, growing larger as they approached. For a moment Annja saw the Lamborghini’s volatile color reflected in the shiny chrome bumper, but Krauzer yanked the wheel to the right, went up on the cracked sidewalk momentarily, then pressed harder on the accelerator. “Did anyone ever tell you that I trained to race at NASCAR?” Krauzer sat grinning confidently in the driver’s seat, belted in by a five-point system.

“No.” Annja caught herself lifting her foot for a brake pedal that wasn’t there. With effort, she put her foot back on the floor.

In his early thirties, and one of Hollywood’s wunderkinder as a child of famous parents—his father a powerful producer of movies and his mother an international film star—Steven Krauzer never really had time for anyone else in his life. He was lean and muscular, and he trained in a gym with near-fanatical devotion. He wore Chrome Hearts Kufannaw II sunglasses over dark eyes, and his black chinstrap beard matched his short-cropped hair. His jeans were custom-made and full of holes, and the tailored beige Carhartt men’s work shirt gave him that everyman look he cultivated. He was egocentric, prideful and a prima donna, but he tried to put himself out there as just one of the guys. Krauzer’s image was as much a production as any movie he’d ever directed.

“In one hundred twenty feet, turn left onto West Pico Boulevard, Steven.”

Krauzer was already sailing through the intersection. He missed colliding with a city bus by inches. “You know,” Annja said, “there’s really no rush to find Melanie.”

For a moment, the cool, cocky composure Krauzer displayed evaporated. He curled his left hand into a fist and banged it on the steering wheel.

“Melanie Harp stole from me! She took that scrying crystal because she knew I was going to need it for the scenes today. She’s trying to destroy my film.”

“She probably doesn’t even know the theft has been discovered.” The realization that the scrying crystal was missing had occurred only a little over twenty minutes ago. Since Annja had been hired as an expert on the authenticity of the props, Krauzer had demanded she come with him to find the woman he believed had taken the scrying crystal.

“Ha!” Krauzer reached down and flicked the gearshift, skidding through another corner and nearly locking bumpers with a delivery truck that pulled hastily to the side. “That just goes to show that you might know a lot about anthropology, but you don’t know squat about Hollywood.”

Archaeology.

But she didn’t press the issue, because it would only serve to distract the director. Since she’d been in LA serving as a consultant on his movie, Krauzer hadn’t paid attention to her anyway.

Krauzer hadn’t even known about her show, Chasing History’s Monsters. She’d been requested as a consultant on the film by one of the producers. When Krauzer had discovered she was something of a celebrity herself, he hadn’t been happy. He’d warned her about becoming a distraction to the filming. What he had meant was she shouldn’t steal any of the the director’s thunder.

Chasing History’s Monsters had a large international fan base, and Annja enjoyed doing the show. She strove for actual historical authenticity and audiences responded well to her stories. An elf witch’s scrying stone, however, was off the beaten path for an archaeologist.

“If you check social media,” Krauzer went on, “I’m sure someone has posted about the theft of the elf witch’s scrying crystal. Five minutes after Melanie Harp took that thing, you can bet the whole world knew. No. We’re going to be lucky if she hasn’t left town and gone back to wherever it is she’s from.” He looked at Annja. “Do you know where she’s from?”

“No.”

Krauzer returned his attention to the streets. “I thought you might have known.”

“Why would I know?”

Krauzer shrugged. “She’s a girl. You’re a girl. Girls talk.”

Annja struggled not to take offense at the offhand summation, but it was difficult. She took out her smartphone, entered the security code and studied the viewscreen when it opened up the websites she’d been inspecting.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“When we found out the scrying crystal was missing, I programmed in some online movie memorabilia sites to see if the prop showed up there. In case Melanie is trying to sell it.”

“The prop? Seriously? Just yesterday you were telling me that we might have a real artifact on our hands. You were begging me for a chance to examine it. Now the elf witch’s scrying crystal is a prop?”

Begging was a strong word. After seeing the crystal briefly in one of the scenes Krauzer had shot the previous day, Annja had been curious about the piece. She wasn’t all that invested in the crystal. She’d wanted to see it, but Krauzer had refused, insisting that the crystal had to be locked up when the filming had finally finished. She’d known the director was deliberately throwing his weight around.

Annja hadn’t lost any sleep over not getting to see the crystal—even if that seriously hampered the job she’d been paid to come here and do!—but the possibility that it might be authentic kept scratching at her mind. Los Angeles—California in general—was a melting pot of the world’s history.

Annja had planned on taking advantage of the movie deal to pursue research into Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, the Portuguese explorer who had sailed under a Spanish flag to explore the West Coast of North America. Annja had turned up some rumors on the alt.history and alt.archaeology sites she’d wanted to check out while she was in town. And Doug Morrell, her producer on the television show, had wanted her to investigate sightings of “ghost pirates” he’d heard about on some late-night radio show.

The research she’d done on Cabrillo had actually led to her interest in Krauzer’s so-called prop, but she hadn’t told him that.

And now the scrying crystal had been stolen and might disappear before she got to find out.

“If Melanie took the scrying crystal—” Annja began.

“Which she did!”

“—then she might think of selling it on one of those sites. How much do you think it’s worth?”

Krauzer cursed. “Fans are idiots! Do you remember when that comic-book artist, the guy who drew Spider-Man or something, paid over $3 million for a baseball?”

“That was Mark McGwire’s seventieth home run in the 1998 season.”

“You’re a baseball fan?”

Annja shrugged. “I live in Brooklyn.”

“Baseball. Bunch of guys standing around waiting for stuff to happen.” Krauzer blew a raspberry. “My point is, this comic-book-sketch guy blew the prices for collectible baseballs for a long time. And they’re baseballs! They sell those everywhere. You can write anybody’s name on them. But that scrying crystal? That’s one of a kind. I made sure of that.”

Annja believed it was one of a kind, too. She needed to study it. “If she was smart, she’d sell the crystal back to you.”

“Me?”

“You’d pay for it if you had to, and you’d pay a lot. You’ve got it insured, right?”

“Of course I’ve got it insured. Do you think I’m some kind of idiot?” Annja ignored the question, certain Krauzer really didn’t want to hear her answer.

“Insurance companies routinely pay off on buyback situations.”

“This is something you know about?”

“Yes.”

“How?” Behind the sunglasses, Krauzer’s features knotted up in suspicion.

“Insurance companies have sometimes hired me to verify a certificate of authenticity on objects that were stolen and bought back. Sometimes thieves have created copies of the stolen items and attempt to sell those to insurance companies, doubling down on the original theft.”

“That cannot happen. I cannot shoot this movie with a counterfeit. Do you know what would happen to my reputation if I did something like that? When fans go to see a Steven Krauzer picture, they see a genuine Steven Krauzer picture. There’s nothing fake about it!”

Krauzer slammed on the brake hard enough that the seat belt cut into Annja as it held her to the seat. The tortured shriek of shredding rubber echoed through the neighborhood, and the Lamborghini came to a stop half on the street and half on the sidewalk.

Leaning over, Krauzer popped open the glove compartment and took out a nickel-plated revolver with a six-inch barrel. “Let’s go.”

He opened the car door and got out.

2

Shocked at the sight of the gun and the director’s apparent willingness to use it, Annja was a step behind Krauzer as he strode toward the building. She caught up to him as he slid the big pistol in his waistband at his back and covered it up with his shirttail.

“A gun?” Annja asked. “Seriously?”

“Having a gun makes people listen to you.”

“Do you even know how to use it?”

“Of course I do.” Krauzer shook his head. “I cut my teeth on guns-and-ammo movies. Action stuff. Science fiction. I had to know how to use guns so I could film actors using them. You wouldn’t believe how many times directors get it wrong because they don’t know how to use a gun and the actors don’t know, either. Big case of the blind leading the blind.”

“This isn’t ‘Grand Theft Auto.’”

“That woman stole my scrying crystal and she’s delaying my film! She’s not smart enough to do that on her own. She has partners. Trust me.”

Annja was beginning to think Steven Krauzer lived inside a movie in his head. “Melanie Harp is not a master criminal.”

“Exactly my point. She couldn’t have thought of this on her own. She had help.”

“I don’t think she knows any master criminals, either.”

“Do you know that for a fact? Because I don’t.”

Annja didn’t bother to argue, because she knew she wouldn’t win. She just hoped no one got hurt.

A green awning covered the double-door entrance, which had seen better days. Gold lettering on the door announced The Wickersham Apartments. The red carpet leading up to the doors was thin and worn.

There was no guard on the door, but another sign promised Security.

An older woman wearing a sundress, a floppy hat and big sunglasses and holding a small dog came through the doors. She wrapped her arms protectively around her pet as Krauzer barreled toward her.

“Don’t shut that door,” Krauzer barked.

The woman blocked the closing door with her sandaled foot.

Krauzer caught the door, pulled it wide and entered the apartment building.

“Thank you,” Annja told the woman.

The woman looked at her conspiratorially and leaned in to whisper, “Is he somebody?”

“He likes to think he is,” Annja replied.

Shaking her head, the woman said, “So many people in this town think that. They do one cat-food commercial and they think they’re stars.” She waved dismissively and continued her walk.

She smiled at the woman, then hurried after Krauzer.

Annja reached the landing with Krauzer and went up the next flight. “Do you know which floor Melanie lives on?”

Krauzer checked his smartphone. “Fourth floor. Apartment F.”

“Okay, and if she’s there, you’re not going to shoot first and ask questions later?”

“I’m not going to shoot unless I have to. I don’t want to hurt that crystal.”

* * *

“THIS COULD ALL be some kind of mistake,” Annja said as they stepped into the fourth-floor hallway from the stairwell. The hallway was narrow and poorly lit. Evidently, Melanie Harp’s career had been skidding farther over the edge than the entertainment shows had reported.

“You’re saying Melanie accidentally stole my scrying crystal?” Krauzer demanded.

“She got cut from the picture—”

“She got cut because she drinks and snorts so much she can’t get to work on time. Thankfully, she’s not in many of the scenes I’ve shot so far, so I can just get another actress in. The only reason I hired her in the first place was for the extra publicity having her working for us would bring. You know, entertainment media cruising around to see if Melanie Harp was going to have another meltdown.” Krauzer cursed. “I just really didn’t expect this. Her agent promised me. The schmuck is definitely gonna hear from me.”

“Taking the scrying crystal could be a cry for help.”

Krauzer growled irritably and shook his head. “Figures you’d stick up for her.”

“I’m not sticking up for her.”

“Sounds like it to me. You’re a girl. She’s a girl.”

For a moment, Annja thought about drop-kicking Krauzer in a way that would remind him he was not a girl. She blew out a calming breath and reminded herself that there was a lot of research she was looking forward to this evening.

And she would definitely get to look at the scrying crystal and satisfy her curiosity about the piece if Melanie had it and was still home.

Krauzer stopped in front of the door to apartment 4F, took the pistol from his waistband and gripped it in his fist. He stood there for a moment, ran his free hand through his hair, let out a quick breath and shook himself. Then he knocked on the door.

There was no answer.

For a moment, Krauzer stood there. Then he looked at Annja. “Why isn’t she opening the door?”

“I don’t read minds.”

He shrugged. “So what would you guess?”

“Maybe she’s not home. Maybe she’s on her way back to the studio with the scrying crystal and feeling really guilty.”

Krauzer thought about that for just a second. “Or maybe she’s taking a clever forgery back there to pass off as the real thing.”

Annja regretted mentioning anything about insurance companies and counterfeit items.

His attention back on the door, Krauzer banged on the door with his fist. “Melanie! It’s Steven Krauzer. I know you’re in there! You can’t hide from me. Open up. I want my scrying crystal back!”

They could hear movement sounding inside. There were at least two pairs of footfalls.

“See?” Krauzer said, frowning at the door. “Told you she wasn’t alone. The mastermind of this whole thing is in there with her.”

Krauzer stepped forward and banged on the door again, harder and faster this time. “Melanie! Get out here in the next minute and I’ll keep you off the entertainment shows. I’ll have the PR people whip up a story that the reason you’re no longer in the movie is that you had something else come up. You know how this town works. You start putting a story out there, even if it’s a lie, pretty soon everybody has heard about it. Then somebody, if you play your cards right, will actually offer you something.”

“I have been offered something, you self-absorbed little Hitler,” Melanie called back through the door.

Krauzer gazed at Annja in disbelief. “Did she just call me ‘little’?”

Annja ignored the question. “Melanie, it’s Annja Creed.”

“What are you doing here?”

“We need the scrying crystal.”

There was a short pause. “It’s not here.”

Krauzer kicked the door. “What do you mean it’s not here?”

They heard a quick flurry of whispering.

“I mean it’s not here unless you pay me for it,” Melanie replied.

“I’m not going to pay you for something you stole from me!” Krauzer howled.

“If you want it back, you are.”

Krauzer stepped back and kicked the door. The frame splintered as the lock tore free. In the room, Melanie Harp stood next to a beefy bald guy wearing a biker jacket and dirty jeans.

The actress’s arms were crossed in front of her defiantly. Her blond hair was piled on her head in a twist that was coming undone and looked as though a surge of electricity had shocked it free. She was underweight, something the makeup people had struggled to deal with, and bags bulged beneath her red eyes, one of which was brown and the other an exotic lavender. Evidently, she’d lost one of her contacts.

“You can’t just break into my home,” Melanie protested.

Krauzer looked around in disdain. “This dump?”

“Hey,” the big bruiser rumbled. He sounded like a cement mixer coming to life. He was in his forties and had scars on his head and cheeks that Annja could see through the graying beard that hung to his chest. He wasn’t wearing a shirt under the biker jacket. His jeans were tucked into motorcycle boots. “Don’t disrespect the lady.”

Krauzer turned to the biker. “Did you help steal my scrying crystal?”

The biker stepped forward. “Hey, man, you stole Melanie’s job. I’m just helping her even the score.”

“I gave her that job, you idiot! I took it back because she can’t handle it. She’s the one who prefers squalor and nose candy over working. And her taste in boyfriends isn’t so great either, evidently.”

The biker closed his fists and took another step forward. “Now you’re gonna get beat.”

Krauzer pointed the pistol at the biker’s face. “Keep coming, you big ape.”

Melanie closed her brown eye and squinted the lavender one at Krauzer. “Oh my God, Barney! He’s got a gun!”

Barney the biker? If Krauzer hadn’t been waving the big pistol around, Annja wouldn’t have been able to keep from laughing.

Eyes popping, Barney stepped back. “Hey, man. No fair.”

Annja knew Krauzer was already in danger of getting arrested for threatening Melanie and her guy, and maybe she was, too, at this point. Getting arrested for felonious assault with a deadly weapon would not sit well with Doug. She also knew that if Krauzer accidentally shot someone, things would get even worse in a hurry.

She moved automatically, trapping Krauzer’s gun hand, pinching a nerve in the back of his hand that caused him to release the pistol and catching the weapon before it hit the carpeted floor. She popped the cylinder open, dumped the bullets into her cupped palm and walked over to the window at the back of the living room.

Below the room, a half-filled garbage bin sat open. Annja opened the window, wiped the gun and the bullets clean on the curtain, and dropped them all into the trash. The gun and the rounds disappeared into the discarded debris.

She turned to face the three other people in the room, who stared at her in disbelief.

Krauzer peered out the window and looked apoplectic. “Did you just throw my gun away?”

“Yes,” Annja replied. “Way too many things could have happened with you waving it around.”

“Well, did you happen to think of the things that could happen since I don’t have it to wave around?” Krauzer looked back at Barney the biker, who had pulled a ten-inch hunting knife from behind his back.

“I’m gonna cut you, loudmouth.” Barney waved the knife as if it was a weaving cobra waiting to strike. “Then you’re gonna get that money you owe Melanie.”

3

Krauzer cowered back and nearly fell through the open window. Annja caught the director and moved him over in front of the wall and put herself between him and the biker.

“Move,” Barney ordered, waving his arm in a serpentine motion.

“I just saved your life when I took the gun away,” Annja pointed out.

He scowled at her and maybe there was a little hurt pride in his slit eyes. “If I have to, I’ll cut through you to get to him.” He continued moving the knife in the air.

Annja grabbed the big man’s wrist with one hand and popped him in the throat with the open Y of her other hand. When he stepped back, gagging, she nerve-pinched his hand and let the knife fall to the floor, where it stood embedded upside down.

Barney yanked his hand back. She stood between him and the knife.

Shaking his head, Barney sucked in a breath, then said, “You’re gonna be sorry you did that.” He’d clearly meant the statement to be intimidating, but his words came out in a high-pitched squeak. He rushed at her, intending to use his size and weight against her.

Annja swept his lead foot as it came down, putting it in front of the other foot so that he tripped himself. At the same time, she grabbed his jacket lapels, twisted tightly to accelerate and direct his fall, and pulled him face-first into the wall hard enough to break the plasterboard.

Without a sound, Barney dropped to the floor unconscious.

Melanie held her open hands to either side of her face. “Did you kill him?”

“No.” Annja knelt to unlace one of Barney’s boots, intending to use the string to tie him up. She didn’t need him waking while she was trying to deal with the other two in the room.

Seeing how the tide had turned, Krauzer started to reach for the knife.

“Don’t,” Annja warned as she looped the lace around the unconscious biker’s wrists.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” Krauzer replied, even as he pulled his hand back from the knife.

“I’m going to do exactly that for the moment.” Annja finished tying the biker’s hands behind his back and rose.

In the hallway, neighbors stood in slack-jawed amazement. Several of them were talking into their cell phones. And some of them were taking pictures and video.

Great. Nothing’s ever private these days. Annja sighed and turned her attention to Krauzer and Melanie. “The police are going to be here in minutes, so this is how this is going to go down.” She looked at Melanie. “You’re going to tell me where the scrying crystal is.”

For a moment, Melanie acted as if she was going to refuse. Then she collapsed onto a nearby sofa and started to cry. “It’s in the bedroom closet.”

Annja turned to Krauzer, not trusting him to be in the room alone with Melanie. “Go get the crystal.”

Krauzer frowned, but he went to the adjacent bedroom, rattled around and came back with a boot box. “Found it. And it doesn’t look counterfeit at all.” He smiled in relief and satisfaction, then glanced at Melanie. “Wow, you and Barney boy are into some kinky stuff.”

“And you,” Annja said, ignoring the comment, “are going to let me examine that scrying crystal.”

Krauzer wrapped his arms around the box protectively. “This is mine. I risked my life to get this. I’m never letting it out of my sight again.”

On the floor, Barney snuffled, waking, then struggled and tried to get up.

Annja plucked the knife from the floor and looked at Krauzer. “I risked my life to help you, and I’m still going to have to deal with the police for hours because of you, so I’m going to get to study that crystal. Otherwise, I’m going to cut Barney free. I figure you guys have time for a rematch before the police arrive. Do you like your chances?”

Krauzer gritted his teeth. “All right, but we should go, not hang around for the cops.”

Pointing at the people at the door, Annja said, “This is probably going out live on television right now.”

Outside, sirens filled the street and grew louder as they neared the building.

“And we’re all out of time for running.”

* * *

“THEY WERE READY to kill each other over this?” LAPD sergeant Will Cranmer looked at the scrying crystal Annja was studying. He was in his early fifties; his hair and mustache were gray and neatly clipped, and he wore aviator sunglasses against the dimming sun.

The spherical crystal appeared to have been cast of yellowish glass and was as big as both her fists put together. Each of its four flat spots were about as large as Annja’s thumb.

Annja leaned against Krauzer’s Lamborghini. “I think kill may be a bit strong.”

She’d had confrontations with police all over the world. They all wanted people to admit to things so court cases would go more easily. She wasn’t going to confirm anything that would possibly bring on more trouble. “The discussion did get heated.”

“There is the broken door—”

“That door is very flimsy,” Annja said. “I’m sure you noticed that.”

“—and the knife—”

“Which belongs to Barney.”

“—who also doesn’t look so good.” Cranmer nodded toward the big biker in the back of a nearby patrol car.

Handcuffs had replaced the bootlace Annja had used to bind the man. Dried blood covered his upper lip and beard.

“That was me,” Annja said. “Barney didn’t want to give up on the knife after I took it away from him.”

“You did that?” Cranmer looked impressed.

“Yeah.”

“Krauzer is telling the detectives that he did it.” The police officer thrust his chin toward the front of the apartment building.

The director stood between two detectives and was enjoying the attention he was getting from members of the local news media, who were held back by yellow tape.

Annja smiled. “He loves telling stories, so we’ll let him have his glory as long as he can hang on to it.” She had responded only, “No comment,” every time a reporter thrust a microphone into her face and they’d quickly gravitated to Krauzer. “But in case Melanie Harp or Barney tell you later it was me, it was me.”

“Good to know. I’ll clue the detectives in.”

Nobody was getting Barney’s side of the story. Or Melanie Harp’s. The actress had tried to get access to the media, but she’d been locked in the back of another patrol car. “So what makes this glass bowling ball so important?” Cranmer asked.

“It’s a prop in Krauzer’s new movie,” Annja said. “It’s the scrying crystal of an elf witch.”

“What’s the movie?”

“A Diversion of Dragons.”

Cranmer crossed his arms and leaned against the car beside Annja. “Fantasy?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t wait to tell the chief.”

“Why?”

Cranmer grinned. “Krauzer kind of mentioned he had a part in the new movie the chief might be great for.”

“So Krauzer thinks a part in a movie is a get-out-of-jail-free card?”

Cranmer nodded.

“Is it?”

“Yep.”

“That doesn’t sound fair, does it?”

Cranmer grinned. “You still believe in fair?”

“That does sound kind of funny, doesn’t it?”

“Everybody wants to be in front of the camera.”

“How about you?”

“I was a bit player in a lot of cop shows when I was younger. I got over it,” Cranmer said. “So tell me about the crystal ball.”

“Scrying crystal.”

Cranmer shrugged. “I’ve arrested fortune-telling con artists with bigger balls.”

Annja raised her eyebrows.

“I’m a fan of your show,” Cranmer said after a moment’s hesitation. “I was a history major at college before I spent time in the military and became a police officer.” He nodded at the scrying crystal. “I noticed you weren’t just looking at that like it was a prop.”

Annja turned it in her hands, feeling the heft of it and the irregularities along the surface. When she’d first glimpsed the object, she’d gotten a sense of antiquity. After handling it, she was pretty sure that initial impression had been correct.

“I don’t think it is.”

“So what do you suppose it is?”

“Serendipity. Sometimes when you’re looking for one thing, you discover another by accident. You’ve heard of Juan Cabrillo?”

Cranmer nodded “Sailed with the conquistadores, with Hernán Cortés, and later explored the West Coast while searching for a trade route to China.”

“And his last voyage?”

“In 1542 he sailed most of the West Coast and ended up on what we call Santa Catalina Island, intending to stay the winter. Some of his men got attacked by Tongva warriors around Christmas Eve. Cabrillo stepped off the ship and splintered his shin, ended up getting gangrene and dying there. He never made it back to Europe. On San Miguel Island, somebody found a headstone that might have been his.”

“Now I’m impressed.”

“I’ve got four kids. My wife helped them with math and science. I helped them with history and English... They like Chasing History’s Monsters, too. I think my older two boys like it for the other host, but my daughter wants to be you when she grows up. When I tell her I met you today, she’s going to freak.”

He pulled his smartphone from his shirt pocket.

“Do you mind...?”

“Sure.” Annja stood beside Cranmer and he got the phone ready. “Wait!” She reached up and took her hair down and ran her fingers through it. “Okay.” She smiled, Cranmer smiled, and he took the selfie. Twice.

“Thanks.” Cranmer put the phone back in his pocket.

“How does Juan Cabrillo fit in with the elf witch’s scrying crystal?”

“Cabrillo’s logbook of the voyage along the West Coast was never found,” Annja said. “There’s only a concise summation made by Andrés de Urdaneta, a Spanish navigator who also worked on finding a way to sail around the world after Magellan’s crew managed.”

“Another ship’s captain who didn’t finish a voyage.”

“Exactly. Anyway, one of the local professors of history at Cal State has some old journal pages that one of his students said had been in the hands of his maternal grandmother’s family for years. They were an heirloom of some sort, saved in a safe-deposit box that ended up bequeathed to the student in a will. He asked Dr. Orta to have a look at it. Dr. Orta had read I was in LA working with Krauzer, so he called me.”

“He’s a fan of the show?”

“Claims to be, but he’s more interested in history. The papers Dr. Orta showed me claim to be from one of the mates aboard the San Salvador, a man named Julio Gris. Gris was a treasure hunter and in the papers he states that he found a lead to a lost treasure.”

“But this could be a hoax.”

Annja held up the scrying crystal. “It could be, except the papers describe this perfectly.”

4

The papers Dr. Vincent Orta possessed had a sketch of the scrying crystal. The drawing was on the fourth page of Julio Gris’s manuscript. The parchment was old and weathered, unevenly burned along one side, and had turned the amber hue of honey. All twelve sheets were hermetically sealed in individual plastic protectors.

Some of the ink had faded, but Orta had brought the lines back to clarity with a chemical treatment. Annja just hoped that the work hadn’t erased the hidden message she thought might be there.

She sat on a high stool at an architect’s desk in the university classroom Orta had opened for their use that night. He’d also taken the liberty of sending out to a Mongolian restaurant and had ordered enough so that Krauzer could join them for dinner.

Orta had been polite about the unexpected company, but he wasn’t overly friendly to Krauzer, who continued to be loud and obnoxious. The director didn’t notice the snub on Orta’s part, though.

“So that’s my scrying crystal?” Krauzer leaned over Annja’s shoulder to look at the page.

“I believe so.” Once she’d carried the crystal in, Orta had become as excited as she was, and he was just as certain it was the artifact described in Gris’s papers. Krauzer shook his head. “Nah. Doesn’t look anything like my crystal.”

Annja shot him a look. “It’s round. It’s glass. It has four flat spots on it. That,” she said, pointing the chopsticks at the glass ball, then at the drawing, “is this.”

“I don’t see it.” Thankfully, Krauzer’s phone rang and he turned away to answer it.

Orta shook his head. “That man’s an idiot.”

“I heard that,” Krauzer said.

“Good. I don’t have to repeat myself.” Orta heaved a sigh.

“So we’re in agreement?” Annja asked.

“Definitely. I can’t believe you found this.”

“I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t shown me these papers. Sometimes it’s like that. There are places all over the world where artifacts have sat in plain sight for years and no one knew what they were until they started investigating.”

“Do you know where Krauzer got it?” Orta asked.

“Not yet.”

Orta studied Krauzer. “He didn’t tell you?”

“He doesn’t know. He got it from a set designer. She’s out of town on a shopping spree somewhere in South America. I’ve sent emails, so hopefully, when she gets somewhere with internet access, she’ll have more information.”

“There’s not a bill of sale or something? No means of tracing this?” He shook his head in disbelief.

“Set designers collect from everywhere and often the objects sit in warehouses—or their homes—until they can find a movie to sell it to. They’re given a budget and, more or less, told to spend it. I’ve also discovered that sometimes the bills of sale are as fictitious as Hollywood. Tracking down where things actually came from can be difficult. Besides, we’re more interested in where this is going to take us. If we find out for sure what this is, we’ll figure out where it’s been.”

A rueful frown pulled at the corners of Orta’s mouth. “Where it takes you, perhaps. One of us still has classes to teach.”

That was true. Annja felt bad for him. She couldn’t imagine being trapped on a schedule without recourse to follow up on an artifact. “I appreciate you calling me in on this. And I appreciate dinner.”

“It’s the least I could do. I haven’t forgotten you agreed to take a lecture for me at some point.” Orta grinned. “That’s got me in pretty solid with the dean.”

“Well, let’s see if we can decipher what Julio Gris was protecting.”

* * *

“ARE YOU GOING to get me out of here?” Melanie Harp pulled at the oversize orange jumpsuit as she sat at the visitation window in the LAPD jail. “This place is horrible, Ligier. They’re treating me like I’m a criminal.”

She spoke in French because using the language made her feel special and because she didn’t want the guards and prisoners around her to listen in.

She ran her fingers through her hair and tightened her grip on the phone that connected her to the man on the other side of the bulletproof glass that separated them.

“I’ll get you out as soon as I can, baby,” Ligier de Cerceau replied calmly. He was always calm. That somber solidness was one of the things about him that had first attracted Melanie. When he was in LA, he was her rock.

He looked as if he was carved out of rock, too. He was six and a half feet tall and broad shouldered. His blond curls hung in disarray around his bronzed face, making his bright blue eyes appear startling. Amber stubble covered his square chin.

For the jail visit, he’d claimed to be her lawyer and had dressed the part: Italian suit, nice loafers, a high-end watch and a leather briefcase. Instead of softening him up, the suit made him look even scarier.

“Why can’t you get me out of here now?” Melanie thought she was going to start crying again. Getting fired from the movie was bad. Getting locked up was bad. But there was nothing like coming down cold from an addiction. She was already covered in sweat and she was freezing. She felt as if her insides were about to explode.

“Because they haven’t charged you. Once they charge you, I can get you out.”

“Promise?”

“Sure, baby.”

De Cerceau blew Melanie a kiss and she felt a little better.

“Now tell me about this glass ball you had.”

“I already sent you pictures of it.” Melanie didn’t know what he wanted out of the prop. She wouldn’t even have stolen the stupid thing if he hadn’t told her to. It had been his idea for her to take it after she’d gotten released from the picture. He’d even flown back in from...wherever he’d been before he got back to LA. He didn’t always tell her his business, and she liked that he could be so mysterious. Just ride into town and sweep her off her feet. He’d told her he’d seen her in Fifty Hues of Indigo and had fallen in love with her. That had been so romantic.

“I got the pictures, baby, but I’d like to know a little more about the ball.”

“Why?”

He grinned at her the way he did that drove her crazy, and then he leaned close to the window. “Because I thought I’d steal it back for you, have it for you by the time you get out tomorrow, and we could make the studio pay to have it returned. That way you still get severance and a nest egg until you get a serious role.”

Melanie hesitated even though he always knew just what to say to her. “That’s what we were going to do the first time. That didn’t work out so well.”

“If I’d been here, things would have gone better—you know that—but I couldn’t be here until now. I came as soon as I could.” De Cerceau shrugged. “Besides, this time I’m going to take that director, too. Make the studio pay to get them both back. That way your nest egg will be even bigger.”

A bit of hope and excitement dawned in Melanie, curbing some of the monster that was struggling to get free inside her. De Cerceau was so good at providing for her. She was lucky she’d met him and he loved her so much. “That sounds awesome.”

“Where can I find Krauzer?”

“He’s probably with that woman. Annja.” Melanie struggled to think, but it was hard to do while she was sitting there sweating and freezing. “She’s a consultant Krauzer brought in. But she’s tricky, too. She knocked out Barney and made it look easy.”

De Cerceau smiled at her. “I’m not Barney.”

“I know.” Melanie smiled at him. “I just want you to be prepared.”

“Do you know what hotel she’s staying at?”

Melanie shook her head, but the motion only made her head ache. “No.” She thought some more because de Cerceau looked disappointed in her. “Wait. I know where she might be. She made Krauzer promise to let her examine the scrying crystal.”

“Why did she want to do that?”

“I overheard her talking about the crystal to some professor at SoCal.” Melanie dug for the name. It had sounded like some kind of whale... “Orta. He’s a professor of history or something. While we were waiting for the police to get there, she talked to him and asked if they could swing by tonight.”

“They’re going to the university?”

“Yeah.”

A frown crinkled de Cerceau’s eyes.

“Is something wrong?” Melanie asked.

The frown went away and he shook his head. “Nothing, baby. You don’t worry about anything. I have to be going, but I’ll see you in the morning. Just remember, don’t say anything to anyone until you hear from me.” He hung up the phone and blew her a kiss.

She mimed catching the kiss and smiled at him.

When he was gone, she felt completely empty.

She got up and followed the guard back to her cell.

* * *

OUTSIDE THE JAIL, Ligier de Cerceau walked toward the waiting dark blue Mercedes-Benz sedan. The driver got out, opened the back door and allowed de Cerceau inside.

“Thank you, Gerard.”

“Of course, Colonel.” Stocky and well dressed, Gerard Malouel was, like his employer, former Brigade des Forces Spéciales Terre.

As such, they’d served in the French army’s special forces unit. Both had undertaken missions in Operation Heracles in Afghanistan. That was where de Cerceau had discovered how much money could be made finding and selling relics. He and the core of his team—then and now, after they’d gone into business for themselves—had stumbled across a group of relic hunters, killed them and found out what the items they were smuggling out of the country were worth.

That discovery had been life changing. These days de Cerceau still did mercenary work, but he made a lot of money dealing in artifacts, as well. He didn’t care anything for antiquities, but he liked the money collectors of those things would pay for pieces they coveted.

Gerard slid behind the steering wheel. “Where to, Colonel?”

“The University of Southern California.”

Gerard pressed buttons on the GPS as he pulled out of the parking area and onto North Los Angeles Street. “Did everything go well with the woman?”

“She’s going to keep her mouth shut for a while, but she’s suffering from drug withdrawal.”

Gerard considered that for a moment. Then he shifted in his seat. “That doesn’t make her sound very trustworthy.”

“She’s not.” De Cerceau checked his email on his phone and discovered a new text from SEEKER4318. He didn’t know who was behind the name, but the man paid well and on time. He was new to de Cerceau, but he’d been vouched for by a past buyer.

SEEKER4318: Retrieve the object and I will happily pay you the amount we discussed.

De Cerceau responded, I will have it in my hands soon.

“Do you know anyone who can arrange something for Melanie?” de Cerceau asked.

“The women’s section of the jail can be a little harder to set up than the men’s, but I’m sure I can find someone. There are plenty of violent women in jail, and some of them are more cold-blooded than their male counterparts.”

De Cerceau agreed. In his business, he’d dealt with many dangerous women. “Get it done as soon as you can. I don’t want her talking to anyone and complicating this.”

Gerard nodded and pulled out his smartphone.

De Cerceau occupied himself with organizing a team for the USC part of the operation. He also wondered who Seeker was. The man had responded immediately when Melanie had posted pictures of the scrying crystal on the internet.

Glancing outside the tinted window, de Cerceau watched downtown LA speed by him, waiting for the call to be picked up at the other end.

* * *

WITH THE HARD-DRIVING sound of the Sex Pistols reverberating off the walls in the next room, SEEKER4318 stared at the young woman lying bound and gagged on the motel bed. Excitement thrilled through him as it always did when he had a woman helpless before him.

This one was in her mid-to late twenties and was trim and athletic, strong enough and quick enough to make kidnapping her in the parking lot of her apartment building difficult. But he’d watched her for weeks, and he’d known her schedule. All he’d had to do was lie in wait with a stun gun and grab her when she fell. He hunted regularly, but after finding out about the glass ball made by Julio Gris, he’d accelerated his schedule.

He needed a kill to calm himself.

The panicked woman struggled on the king-size bed. Usually a victim’s attempts to escape would have excited him even more.

But his anticipation was blunted. The news from de Cerceau gave reason to be hopeful that Julio Gris’s Key of Shadows would soon be in his hands. Everything else paled by comparison.

He sat beside the woman on the bed but didn’t try to touch her. Even still, she managed to push herself away a few inches.

“Don’t worry,” he told her and smiled. “I’m not going to defile you. I’m not interested in that. Do you know what heruspicy is?” he asked.

She didn’t say anything, due to the gag, but he liked the sound of his own voice.

“Do you believe in fortune-telling? Ever read your horoscope and tried to see if the day was going to go as it predicted? Surely you’ve done that.”

Cautiously, the woman nodded. Tears tracked down her face, and he knew she was trying to please him. He didn’t like when they did that. He wanted hopeful fighters, women who denied their own mortality even when it stared them in the face.

“Ah, you have read your horoscope?”

She nodded but didn’t try to talk through the gag.

“Sometimes they come true, you know.”

Shaking, she nodded again.

“Well, heruspicy is a lot like that. It’s a way to foretell the future. The Romans practiced it. But you still don’t know what it is, do you?”

She shook her head.

“It’s the practice of slitting open a sacrificial creature and reading its entrails. You do know what entrails are, right?”

The woman knew.

Frantic, she struggled against her bonds again but only ended up exhausted. SEEKER4318 allowed her to fight because she would tire herself out and that would make her easier to deal with in the end.

Finally, drained, panting for breath, the woman lay in a quivering mass on the bed. Nobody had heard the noise she’d made while struggling over the blaring punk music in the next unit.

Anxious to see what the future held, SEEKER4318 plunged his dagger into the woman’s stomach and ripped up through her breastbone. Blood poured onto the bed in a pulsing waterfall. Placing the knife to one side, SEEKER4318 pulled apart the wound he’d created and took out two handfuls of the woman’s insides for inspection.

He felt even more optimistic.

The Key of Shadows and the treasure of the Merovingian kings would be his soon enough.

All the signs pointed to a good resolution of his present problem.

5

“What are you doing now?” Krauzer clicked off his smartphone and walked over to Annja, who’d placed the scrying crystal on a camera tripod a short distance from the wall where pages of Julio Gris’s manuscript hung.

“Checking for a hidden message.” Annja took the high-powered miniflashlight from her backpack and shone it through the crystal, concentrating on one of the flat spots.

“Inside the scrying crystal?” Krauzer scoffed.

“The manuscript Julio Gris left indicates that the message is concealed somewhere inside.” Annja moved the flashlight and the crystal at the same time.

The diffused beam of light shone through the crystal and onto the first manuscript page.

“You need to be careful with that,” Krauzer warned. “That’s one of a kind. I can’t replace that crystal in the movie. I’ve shot too many core scenes with it.”

“If you got a 3-D modeler, you could make one of these on a 3-D printer,” Orta told him.

“Movie audiences can tell when something’s real these days. They like real stuff in their movies.”

Annja looked at him. “This is supposed to belong to an elf witch.”

“Hey, viewers want to believe in elf witches and hobbits and dragons. I’m not going to argue with them. I’m going to give them what they want. In fact, I’ll give them bigger dragons than they’ve ever seen before.”

Ignoring the director, Annja continued to shine the light across the pages. She wasn’t frustrated yet, but her options were limited. And she was constantly aware of Krauzer growing more and more impatient.

“Did Julio Gris tell you to shine a flashlight through the crystal?” Krauzer asked smugly. “Because that right there would tell you that manuscript is a fake. They didn’t have flashlights back when Juan Cabrillo sailed to California, right?”

Annja ignored the question.

“Right?”

Knowing Krauzer wasn’t going to let up until he was answered, Annja said, “Right.”

“So we’re all done here? I’ve saved you from wasting more time. I can take my scrying crystal and get back to the studio, and you and the professor can look at old crap to your hearts’ delight.”

“Gris suggested using natural light or a candle flame to reveal the message,” Orta said. “We’re using a flashlight because it’s more accurate and it’s not daylight outside.”

Krauzer folded his arms. “Shining a light through a crystal sounds really stupid, if you ask me.”

“Have you ever heard of a magic lantern?” The frustration in Orta’s voice turned his words ragged.

“Of course I have. ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.’ Aladdin’s lamp. Even Uncle Scrooge McDuck went looking for a magic lamp. That stuff’s all old.”

“A magic lantern,” Orta said in a louder voice, “was an early precursor to filmmaking.”

“So were hand puppets.”

Orta sighed. “I’m just saying that there was a basis for this use of the scrying ball.”

“Okay, but I’ve got to take that crystal and scoot. We’ve got an early shoot planned tomorrow. Morning sunlight doesn’t last forever.” Krauzer tapped his watch, then answered his ringing phone again.

Annja was thankful. The man was too accustomed to being in control. She rotated the crystal and shone the light through the other flat spots onto the pages.

Her back ached from the combination of constant bending and anticipation. Something had to be here. Unless the scrying crystal was not the one mentioned in the manuscript.

Or if the manuscript was a hoax.

Krauzer punched his phone off and returned to observe. “Well, that was good news.”

Neither Annja nor Orta bothered to ask what the good news was.

“That was Rita, my personal assistant. She had to wait until the cops left, but she got my gun back.”

Annja straightened and reconsidered the problem.

“So, you’re satisfied there aren’t any secret messages in the crystal?” Krauzer asked. “I can get back to the studio?”

The director’s words turned the possibilities around in Annja’s mind. She glanced at Orta. “I think we’ve been going at this wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Orta asked.

“Maybe the message is inside the crystal.” Annja pressed the flashlight onto one of the object’s flat areas. The light caused the crystal to glow softly as the illumination diffused through the twists and turns of the sparkling latticework contained within the thing.

“There’s nothing inside that crystal.” Krauzer shook his head and looked grumpy. “You’re wasting my time.”

Annja continued her search, but she became quickly discouraged when nothing turned up. The light caught various facets and reflected through the glass ovoid, squirming through to another side in some places and stopping in others. Occasionally, the light snaked back on itself and became looped.

Nothing made sense.

Pausing again, Annja glanced at the manuscript pages. They have to be part of this, she reasoned.

Krauzer sifted through the food cartons and muttered in displeasure. At least he was being somewhat quiet about his irritation.

A new thought struck Annja and she glanced up at Orta. “Let’s get the pages over here.”

Orta picked up the first page. “Shine the light through the pages?”

“That’s the only thing we haven’t tried.”

“The plastic protectors might interfere.” In spite of his misgivings, Orta held the first page against one of the flat spots on the crystal.

Annja placed the flashlight lens against the laminated paper and slowly guided the manuscript page along so that every square inch was covered. After covering nearly the whole page, her hopes steadily sinking while Krauzer continued to stew, Annja blinked to clear her vision when she spotted writing in the lower right corner.

She lowered the flashlight and raised the page to examine the surface with her naked eye. Even holding the manuscript up to the overhead lights didn’t show anything. The striations within the crystal somehow translated the image, probably through various degrees of refraction.

“Did you find something?” Orta stood at her side, his chest resting slightly against her shoulder.

“Yes,” Annja answered. Her voice sounded quiet in her own ears, but her excitement thrummed like a live thing inside her.

“You’re imagining things,” Krauzer insisted. “You’re tired and you want something to be there.” Still, he came to stand on her other side and peered at the crystal. “See? Nothing’s there.”

“Look inside it.” Annja replaced the page over the flat spot and shone the flashlight against the page so the beam shone into the crystal.

Inside the crystal, the neat handwriting stood revealed, almost too small to read. The penmanship was delicate, ornate and so small. Each space between words was carefully designed.

“I don’t see anything,” Krauzer challenged.

Annja nodded to Orta. “Hold these.”

Silently, enraptured by what he was seeing, Orta held the flashlight and the page. He experimented by pulling the flashlight lens back from the paper. “I can get the writing a little larger, but pulling the light source reflects back too much and throws off the focus, causing it to disappear.”

Annja opened her backpack and took out her tablet PC and a small digital camera. She slipped on an equally small macro lens. “If someone had read the manuscript pages in that crystal all those years ago, they couldn’t have put a candle flame up against the paper.”

“Someone built this crystal to hide the message inside the manuscript pages.” Orta shook his head. “But the crystal looks so real.”

“The crystal is real. This is old, probably grown over time. I’d like to find out who created it, as well.” Annja left the tablet PC on one of the tables and brought the camera to the crystal. She experimented with angles and found the one that best revealed the message within the depths of the crystalline latticework. She snapped images.

“I see it.” Krauzer bent so low and so close that his breath temporarily fogged the crystal. Looking embarrassed, he leaned back. “You know, that’s pretty cool. I could use something like this in A Diversion of Dragons.”

Orta blew out an impatient breath. “Seriously? You see this—a secret message in a crystal that has to be at least hundreds of years old, the crystal itself even older than that—and the first thing you think of is using it in a movie? You don’t even wonder what the message is?”

“Don’t go all professor on me, Doc.” Krauzer held up his hands defensively. “I’m a movie guy. I’m one of the movie guys in this town. People talk about me the same way they talk about Spielberg and Coppola.”

“You’re an imbecile!”

Krauzer held out a warning finger. “It wouldn’t be smart to make this personal.”

“Smart? You’re not intelligent enough to know when you’re not invited to something.”

“Are you talking about the food?” Krauzer hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the takeout cartons sitting on the table. “I can pay for that. In fact, I’ll pay for it all.” He pulled out a black American Express card. “You take plastic?”

Frozen by the sudden outbreak of tempers, Annja couldn’t believe what was taking place. Male testosterone was so easily misplaced. “Guys? Maybe we could focus.”

Orta blushed a deep red. “I cannot believe the crystal ended up in your hands.”

Krauzer glared at his rival. “Yeah, well, it’s mine. Whatever secret message is in there is mine, too, so if there’s treasure, it’s mine.”

“The message isn’t in the crystal, you idiot. It’s on these pages. Which I have.”

“Yeah, well, I own the decoder ring. Try to figure out your secret message without that.” Krauzer shrugged. “I don’t need the secret message. It’s probably ‘Juan Cabrillo was here.’ Or maybe ‘Today the chef’s mystery meat was particularly horrible.’ You think Twitter and Facebook invented boring self-indulgence? Try reading some of those classics college professors cram down your throat.”

“Have you even wondered why anyone would go to the trouble of putting a secret message in these pages and that crystal?”

“I don’t care. I’ll just take my crystal and be going. I’m making a movie. I don’t have time for this crap.” Krauzer started to reach for the scrying crystal, then stopped when Annja narrowed her eyes.

“Not yet,” she told him.

“It’s mine.”

“Not until I’m done with it,” Annja said. “We agreed.”

Glaring at her, Krauzer backed away. “Hurry.”

Annja nodded to Orta. “Ready?”

Breathing out slowly, Orta picked up the flashlight and manuscript page to return to their joint task. It took him only a moment to find the hidden writing.

Peering intently at the handwriting, Annja said, “Looks like calligraphy that was made with some kind of tool.”

“Probably jeweler’s instruments,” Orta replied. “The Portuguese were constantly looking for treasures. Gold, silver and gems. For the message to be rendered so small, I’d say the writer used a jeweler’s loupe, too, though I’m not certain those had been invented at the time this was made. Some type of magnifying glass at the very least.”

Adjusting the magnification of the image on her camera viewscreen, Annja tilted it toward Orta. “This looks like Latin.”

He peered more closely. “Yes, it is. But see the name?”

“Julio Gris.”

“Yes.”

“And unless I’m mistaken, this says it is the last will and testament of Gris.”

“Let’s see what’s on the next page.”

* * *

IN LESS THAN an hour, Annja and Orta had the hidden messages from the manuscript pages shot and mostly decoded. She loaded the images onto her tablet PC and enlarged them. She’d shot them so they could be enhanced. Compiling the images into a single file she could flip through with the touch of a button took only a few minutes.

The person who had written the message had a fine hand at calligraphy. The whorls and loops looked as though a machine had punched them out.

“Well?” Krauzer sat on a stool on the other side of the large table. His arms were folded across his chest and his lips were pursed into a petulant frown.

“What?” Annja asked.

“Isn’t somebody going to read the message?”

“I thought you weren’t interested.”

Krauzer shook his head in irritation. “You know, you might want to borrow my crystal again at some point.”

That was true. Annja focused on the message. “‘This is the last will and testament of Julio Gris, second mate of the good ship San Salvador. 1542.

“‘In my life, I have been many things before I took my post on Captain Juan Cabrillo’s ship, may God rest his unfortunate soul. If I had been caught for many of the things I did, I would have been shot by jealous husbands or hanged for thievery or murder.

“‘Captain Cabrillo only knew me as a mate aboard his ship, and I worked hard for him because I have always loved the sea. Even more than I loved the sea, though, I have loved the idea of treasure.

“‘God knows of the larceny in my darkest thoughts, and He has taken pains to see that I am properly punished, for it seems I may never claim this prize. I heard the story about the lost treasure of the Merovingian kings from a man who knew György Dózsa, a warrior from the Kingdom of Hungary. According to the man who gave me the story, Dózsa read the pages from the Bibliotheca Corviniana himself.’”

“Wait.” Krauzer held his hands up. “Just hold on. You’re throwing too much information out too fast. Who are the Merovingian kings?”

Before Annja could answer, the room’s main door opened and two armed men strode inside. They wore black clothing with abbreviated Kevlar armor and carried H&K MP5 machine pistols with thick sound suppressors. Dark eyed, the men looked related, but one of them was easily ten years older than the other. He was clean shaven with a well-kept mustache, while the other man had deliberate scruff. Both moved economically, spacing themselves out so they commanded the room.

“Put your hands in the air,” the older man commanded. His accent echoed faintly of French.

Not having any options, Annja did as she was told.

6

“Fox Leader, this is Fox Six.”

Moving quickly through the dim college hallways, Ligier de Cerceau carried his machine pistol in both hands. Adrenaline surged through him as he waited for his companion to unlock the classroom door they stood in front of.

“You have Fox Leader.”

“I have the packages in sight.”

De Cerceau stepped into the empty classroom, flicked on the bright light attached to the machine pistol and surveyed the space. Only tables and chairs occupied the space other than a lectern at the front of the room.

“Are the packages in good shape?” De Cerceau pulled back out into the hallway and took his smartphone from inside his jacket. The Kevlar body armor made the task more difficult, but he managed. He pressed the friend app and watched as the red pins popped up onto the screen to mark the locations of his men.

Twelve of his men roamed through the college of history, and all of them were dangerous, hard men. He’d handpicked each man for his core unit.

“The packages are in excellent shape,” Georges Dipre answered.

“Keep them that way.” De Cerceau gestured to the man beside him to proceed. “I’m on my way to your location now.”

He followed the other man, both of them as quiet as shadows as they drifted through the silent halls.

* * *

STANDING BESIDE ORTA, Annja watched the two men who were holding them prisoner. Their movements were precise and methodical. Professional soldiers, she realized.

“What do they want?” Krauzer whispered.

“The crystal,” Orta answered. Either he spoke French, too, or his native language was close enough that he had no problem following the rapid-fire conversations between the men and the person they were talking to at the other end of their communication units.

Annja had already discerned their interest and hated her helplessness.

“You can’t have the crystal!” Krauzer took a step toward the men. “I need that in my movie.”

“Stay back,” the older man commanded. He squeezed a quick burst from his machine pistol and, while the thick suppressor on the end of the weapon kept the noise quieted, the bullets ripped into the wall at the other end of the room, tearing divots and smashing through framed pictures.

“Okay, okay!” Krauzer dropped to his knees on the floor and held his hands up in surrender.

“Deal with that idiot,” the older man said in French.

The younger man put a knee in Krauzer’s back, pushing the movie director forward as he pulled a zip tie from a thigh pocket.

For a moment, the older man’s attention was diverted as he watched his companion and talked to other members of his group. Partially blocked from the man’s sight and standing to the right of the man handling Krauzer, Annja reached for the thick ceramic plates Orta had brought for their dinner. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the top plate and hurled it in a discus throw, spinning and getting her weight into the effort.

The older gunman brought his weapon to bear and fired a short burst that sliced through the air above Annja’s head as she ducked. Spinning, the heavy plate struck the gunman in the throat and knocked him backward.

Shifting his attention from Krauzer to Annja, the second gunman tried to spin to cover her. Balanced on both hands and one foot, Annja shot her other foot out and caught the gunman in the chest and arm, driving him back toward the table. His head struck the table’s edge with a hollow thump and his eyes slid up so that only the whites showed as he toppled to the floor.

Still in motion, aware that the older gunman had been only momentarily put off, Annja stood and reached for the second plate. She held the plate at the end of her arm like a tennis racket and swung it into the surviving gunman’s face in a backhand swing as she spun.

The plate shattered across the man’s grizzled features and shards exploded in all directions. Blood streamed from the man’s broken nose and a deep cut on one of his cheeks. Unconscious, certainly concussed, the man sank to the floor.

Annja knelt over the man and quickly went through his pockets but found nothing that identified him. A demanding voice spoke over the walkie-talkie the man wore over his shoulder.

She looked at Krauzer and Orta, both of whom stared at her in shock. “There are more coming,” she told them.

“For my crystal?” Krauzer sounded amazed.

“Get it and get moving,” Annja ordered as she took the man’s machine pistol and recognized it as one she was familiar with. She dumped the partially expended magazine and shoved in a fresh one taken from the man’s tactical gear.

Krauzer stood slowly, moving as if he was in a daze. He started at the blood pooling around the gunman’s head. “Is he dead?”

“No.” Annja stood and slung the machine pistol over her shoulder. She listened for footsteps out in the corridor. She didn’t hear anything, but she’d noticed the thick soles on the gunmen’s boots. The team would be moving quietly.

“This is stupid crazy,” Krauzer announced. He wiped his face.

Annja shoved him into motion. “Grab the crystal. Let’s go.” She was happy to see that Orta was already putting the manuscript sheets back in their protective case. Grabbing her backpack, Annja quickly packed her gear into it and pulled it on. She tried to think of how much time had passed and knew that she had no clue.

Orta looked at her. “There are more of these men?”

“Yes.” Annja pulled the ear-throat mic into place and clipped the walkie-talkie to the ammo belt. A deep, controlled voice spoke at the other end, demanding that Fox Six reply. She ignored the command and nodded to Orta. “You know the campus layout. Which way is the quickest way out?”

“Follow me.” Orta headed to the back door.

Krauzer had the crystal wrapped in one arm like an oversize football and was reaching for the other machine pistol lying on the floor.

Taking a quick step, Annja kicked the weapon under the table and out of Krauzer’s reach.

He whirled on her, his features taut with rage and fear. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to keep us alive,” Annja said. “You’re a director, not a commando.”

“And you think you’re some kind of action hero?”

Annja glanced at the two unconscious attackers. “I’ve got experience with this sort of thing.”

“I can shoot! Two guns are better than one.”

“Are you coming?” Annja asked as she jogged toward Orta at the back door.

Krauzer started to go around the table, but another gunman slid into place out in the hallway.

The radio came to life in Annja’s ear. “Fox Leader, Fox Six is down. The woman has a weapon.”

“Kill them,” the deep voice ordered. “Do not harm the crystal.”

Annja lifted the machine pistol and aimed. Then she fired off three short bursts. Bullets hammered the door frame, throwing splinters out into the hallway, and they struck the gunman, knocking him down. Annja didn’t know where the man was hit and knew she didn’t have time to confirm his condition.

After fumbling with the back door, Orta opened it and stuck his head outside. Then he yelped and pulled back inside the room just ahead of a salvo of bullets that ripped into the doorway and outside wall.

Grabbing the man’s arm, Annja pulled him back from the door, squatted and snaked around the door frame. Two men held the hallway, one positioned on either side, with their machine pistols at the ready. As Annja leaned out, one of the gunmen broke cover and rushed toward them.

Annja brought up the machine pistol and fired at almost point-blank range. The gunman managed to get off another burst that burned the air beside her. Her bullets stitched the man from his chest to his face.

She forced herself not to think about what she’d just done. She didn’t have time. She stepped into the guy and gripped his bloodstained tactical vest with her free hand.

Leaning into him, guiding his slow fall by partially supporting his weight as he went down, Annja aimed at the other gunman in the hallway and fired a burst that scored the wall above his head. She corrected her aim as the dead man sagged on her, careful not to let his weight trap her.

The other gunman fired his weapon, either knowing his partner was dead from the blood pooling on the floor or not caring if the other man survived. Bullets thudded into the corpse, some of them burrowing into the tactical armor and some biting into flesh.

Ignoring the vibration of the bullets’ impacts and the grisly weight of the dead man, Annja fired again, emptying her weapon in two short bursts. Tossing the weapon away, she scrambled from beneath the falling dead man, slipped in his blood and recovered as she stripped his weapon from his hand.

Landing on her knees, Annja brought up the new weapon and hoped that the dead gunman hadn’t emptied it during his charge. As she centered the machine pistol on the surviving attacker, the gunman collapsed to the floor. She was on her feet immediately.

When she paused over the second man, Annja dumped the magazine in her weapon and grabbed a fresh one from his gear. She glanced back at Orta and waved him on.

“Fox Nine,” the deep voice called over the radio. “Report. Report!”

The tinny echoes of tactical gear jangling in the hallway reached Annja’s ears and her pulse accelerated. Orta reached her, looking pale.

“Where?” Annja asked as she stood.

Behind the professor, Krauzer spoke rapidly on a cell phone.

“Two corridors ahead, there’s a door that will let us out of the building,” Orta said.

“We can’t leave the building,” Annja replied. “Not yet. Whoever’s after us, you can bet they have someone watching the exterior of the building.” From the professionalism of the gunmen, she suspected there would be snipers.

What was it about the crystal that had drawn attention like this? She had no clue. Yet.

“We need somewhere we can hide,” Annja said, focusing on Orta. “Somewhere safe.”

“Sure, sure.” Orta nodded. He glanced at the elevator farther down the hallway. “The elevator’s there.” He pointed.

“Stairs,” Annja said.

“Next to the elevator.”

Annja took the lead, sprinting down the hallway and reaching the doorway. She paused long enough to peer through the safety glass and saw no one in the dark stairwell. As soon as she stepped through, the lights came on. She pulled the machine pistol into position and stared up the steps.

“It’s automatic,” Orta said. “They’re on timers to conserve electricity.”

The lack of lighting until now also meant that no one was in the stairwell. Annja felt a little safer because of that and led the way up the stairs. At the landing, pausing to make certain the way was clear, she checked on her charges and saw Krauzer putting away his phone.

“Did you get hold of the police?” Annja asked.

“Better than that,” the director said. “I’ve got a package plan with Sabre Race.”

“What’s that?”

“Not what. Who. He’s the best protection guy there is in Hollywood. And I’ve got him on speed dial. He’ll be here in minutes.”

Anger rushed through Annja. Calling in an outsider was only going to complicate things.

The doorway on the floor below was just starting to open. Setting aside her feelings, she leveled the machine pistol and waited as she waved Orta and Krauzer forward.

7

“You have beautiful hands, Sabre. Strong hands. With so much history in them.” The woman clung possessively to Sabre Race’s hand, pulling it close to her breast.

She was five feet nine inches tall, six inches shorter than Sabre, with coal-black hair cut in a bob that hung to her sharply defined jawline. Her bangs hung over her plucked eyebrows and shadowed her violet eyes. The black dress left her toned shoulders bare, showing off her dark brown skin and a hint of cleavage.

“You simply must let me tell your fortune one day.” Her voice carried the spice of the Caribbean in her words. Seated at a private table inside the club, she drew the attention of every male in the room and a good number of the females.

“I would love to,” Sabre said, “but tonight is not the night. I have to leave.”

She released his hand and drew back with a pouty smile. Her name was Tessanne Evora and she was reputed to be one of the best fortune-tellers in LA.

“Are you playing hard to get?” she asked him with hooded eyes.

Enjoying the game, Sabre gave her a small smile that he knew was charming because he’d worked on it. He was fit and in his early thirties. He worked hard on his look. Everyone in LA did. It was all part of the package, and presentation was everything. “Another time,” Sabre promised, “and I would be all yours.”

“Who is claiming your attention this evening?”

“A client in Santa Barbara. But I will definitely see you again.” He palmed a business card from his jacket sleeve, held up his empty hand and flicked the card into view with a flourish. “Soon.”

Tessanne smiled in delight as she took the proffered card. “You do magic, as well.”

“Small things. I lack the skills that you have.” Sabre’s smartphone rang. Only important calls came through to that phone, so he took it out of his jacket pocket and glanced at the screen.

STEVEN KRAUZER CODE RED

I’M OUT FRONT

“Is there a problem?” Tessanne asked.

“A pressing matter,” he replied as he put the phone back inside his jacket. He stood and tapped the business card she was still holding. It held only his name and his private cell. “Not everyone has that number. Call me.”

“I will.”

Sabre nodded and headed for the door, sweeping effortlessly between the club clientele and the servers.

Out on the street, Lajos Meszoly sat at the wheel of a black Mercedes G-Class SUV. Sabre sprinted through the valet lines, dodging new arrivals, departing guests and parking attendants. When he reached the vehicle, he slid into the passenger seat. Meszoly punched the accelerator and sped through the traffic.

“What have we got?” Sabre shucked off his suit and tossed the clothes into the back, where two other armed men sat. He pulled on the combat suit that hung at the ready in the vehicle. Tucking the black pants inside calf-high military boots, he tugged a fitted black sweatshirt over his head. He straped on the Molle tactical gear.

“Krauzer says he’s trapped inside USC campus,” Meszoly replied calmly as he blared his horn and rolled through an intersection on a red light. Traffic on both sides of the intersection halted and honked back at him.

“College?”

“Yeah.” Meszoly was a thickset man in his early thirties. He and Sabre had been together for the past six years, both of them having been contractors in Afghanistan before starting up the protection business in Hollywood. Meszoly’s head was shaved and he kept his face clean, as well. Except for his size, he was instantly forgettable, and he knew how to dress that down, too. That skill made him valuable in close-cover situations. This night he was outfitted with body armor and weaponry.

“Wouldn’t have figured Krauzer for college,” Sabre said. “Is he shooting there?”

“He didn’t say. What he did say was that guys with guns were chasing him down. Him and his elf-witch crystal.”

Sabre shoved an FN Five-seveN pistol into the holster at his hip. “Elf-witch crystal?”

Meszoly shrugged and said, “Hold on,” right before he performed a rubber-shredding left turn. “I don’t think he’s being chased by elf witches.”

“Good, because I forgot my fairy dust.” Sabre glanced at the GPS screen at the center of the console. “Did he mention who was chasing him?”

“Says he doesn’t know.”

“Krauzer is there alone?”

“He has two people with him. A professor and a woman named Creed.”

“Should I know her?” Sabre made an effort to keep up with rising stars in the city, but that was difficult.

“She does cable television.”

“How many people are on-site?”

“The way Krauzer tells it, a small army.”

“Right.”

“Krauzer had a run-in with a biker earlier in the day,” Dyson spoke up from the back.

Sabre glanced into the mirror on the back of the sun visor in front of him. Dyson was one of the young guys, a Marine veteran of Afghanistan.

“The guys hunting Krauzer are bikers?”

“I don’t know. I caught the story on the internet. Krauzer didn’t call, so I didn’t follow up. He usually only has us out when he’s got a new release.”

“And this is over an elf-witch crystal.” Sabre shook his head.

“Krauzer also mentioned something about Merovingian kings,” Meszoly said, “but that got garbled up in gunfire, so maybe I’m wrong about that.”

The mention of the Merovingians sent a jolt of electricity through Sabre. All of the old stories his father had told him came pouring out of his memory, the stories that had been handed down for generations.

Bottling his excitement with the professionalism he’d learned over the years, Sabre looked at the GPS screen again and the red line to USC that had gotten drastically shorter. “How far out are we?”

“Two minutes.”

“Other teams are en route?”

“Two other cars. Eight more guys. If we pull any more, we’ll be leaning out other ops. Want me to do that?”

“No. Twelve of us are a small army.” Sabre reached to the back of the vehicle and Dyson slid an M4A1 into his hands.

How could Krauzer have gotten involved in the Merovingian legends?

8

“Give me an update.” Ligier de Cerceau skidded to a stop at the doorway to the stairwell his quarry had entered. One of his men lay across the doorway threshold, holding the door partially open. Bullet holes showed in the glass viewing section and shards lay scattered in the hallway, telling him at once the bullets had come from within.

“We don’t have access to the security cameras, Colonel,” Gerard Malouel said. He’d remained with the vehicle out in the parking lot so he could monitor the insertion and capture. “I’ve got two helicopters in the air.”

As he leaned against the wall near the stairwell doorway, de Cerceau heard the drumbeat of one of the helicopters’ rotors overhead.

“They’re searching the building, lighting it up with spotlights,” Gerard went on. “One of them is switching over to thermographic systems. We should know more in another minute or two.”

“Have the police been alerted?” De Cerceau hadn’t detected any alarms that had been set off inside the building, but there could be a silent warning system.

“Affirmative. They’re en route.”

De Cerceau cursed, knowing they were running out of time. “If we’re not done here soon, we’ll need to slow them down.”

“We’re already preparing for that. This is going to get messy.” Gerard’s tone remained neutral, but he was unhappy. He wouldn’t have mentioned the potential problem if he hadn’t been disconcerted.

De Cerceau gazed down at the dead man in the doorway. “It’s already gotten messy. We’ve got four dead and one wounded. Almost half the team down.” Because of one lone woman. That was something he couldn’t believe. The first man might have been careless in approaching the people they were after, and perhaps even the second man. But there was no way this many would have been lost through carelessness. Reading the combat situations they’d been engaged in, de Cerceau knew that someone with Krauzer was used to military operations. He cursed.

“Yes, sir.”

Two men closed on de Cerceau’s position, stepped into position against the wall and waited for his orders. The remaining three gunmen held the other end of the building and were advancing up the stairwell there.

Holding the machine pistol tight against his shoulder and aiming it up the stairs, de Cerceau stepped across the dead man and into the stairwell. The enclosed space trapped the stench of death and cordite. He held his position and listened.

Farther up the stairwell, footsteps and quiet voices echoed for just a moment. Then a closing door shut them away. De Cerceau headed up the stairs with the machine pistol leading the way. The dead man behind him had been caught unaware. De Cerceau didn’t intend for that to happen to him. He took the stairs two at a time, his forefinger resting on his weapon’s trigger.

* * *

AS SOON AS he stepped through the stairwell doorway, Krauzer took off down the hallway to the left. The lights came on just behind him as the automatic systems cut in, making him look as if he was leading the charge against the darkness.

Annja kept pace with Orta. “What rooms are this way?” She slid a fresh magazine into the machine pistol.

“Classrooms.” Orta sounded out of breath. He was in good shape, but adrenaline had to be wreaking havoc on him. “Alcoves for the graduate assistants. A research archive. The graduate dean’s office.”

“The research archive sounds big enough to hide in.” She matched Orta stride for stride as they followed Krauzer down the hallway. Glancing at the windows, she realized that the lights reflected from the large windows along the hallway made seeing outside difficult.

Still, she was able to spot the helicopter’s red running lights as it dropped to hover just outside the building. Shoving a leg out, Annja tripped Orta and grabbed his shirtsleeve, pulling him to the ground hard and falling on top of him. As they skidded along the marble tiles, a burst of heavy machine-gun fire chewed through the windows in a ragged line.

Annja threw her arm over her head to protect herself. The helicopter’s whirling rotor noise suddenly rose to a deafening roar inside the hallway.

“Stay down,” she told Orta as she slithered along the hallway through the spray of broken glass. Once she was past the line of destruction, she rose to her knees, pointed the machine pistol at the helicopter’s nose and pulled the trigger.

Bullets tore through the window, blowing shards outside the building. The light made it impossible for her to see where the rounds struck the helicopter, but she thought she saw a jagged line stitched along the pilot’s door.

The helicopter fell away, dodging to put distance between itself and the building. The machine gunner in the cargo area fired, trying to vector in on Annja’s position, but the helicopter’s sudden movement jerked the gunman’s aim off and tracers stabbed into the night.

Shaking the broken glass from her clothes as best as she could, Annja rose to a crouched position and returned to Orta’s side. “Let’s go.”

He pushed himself up on trembling arms and looked at her.

“The archives,” Annja reminded him. “Let’s go there.”

Numbly, Orta nodded, pointed down the hallway and stumbled in that direction.

Annja followed him and only then realized she’d lost track of Krauzer. She struggled to make sense of the sheer magnitude of the assault made by their attackers and what they thought they had to gain by their efforts. She had no answers.

* * *

SABRE STARED UP at the two helicopters circling the USC campus like buzzards eyeing roadkill. “Are those birds ours?”

“Negative.” Gerard pulled on the wheel and guided them over the low curb separating the parking area from the street. The Mercedes’s large wheels climbed the curb easily and the high-tuned suspension smoothed out the bump.

Green machine-gun tracers flitted from the helicopter closest to the building while the second craft circled at a wider radius.

“Who are these people?” Sabre asked.

“Professionals.” Gerard scowled through the windshield. “Messy professionals. This isn’t how you contain a situation. Law enforcement agencies are going to be all over this. The clock’s working against us now.”

Sabre silently agreed but knew that was both a positive and a negative. Police were doubtless on their way now, which took away time from whoever was after Krauzer, but that knowledge was going to make those men tracking Krauzer take even bigger risks.

“Police.” Dyson leaned forward and pointed to the right. “On our two o’clock.”

Glancing to the right, Sabre watched as a black-and-white patrol car, light bar flashing red and blue, pulled into the campus parking area. While it was still in motion, a rocket streaked across seventy yards and impacted against the patrol car’s grille.

The warhead exploded and knocked the patrol car’s front end up like a boxer taking an uppercut to the chin. The engine hood sprang open and a ball of fire engulfed the vehicle, spreading quickly.

Sabre doubted the driver had survived the immediate detonation, and when the flames leaped into the patrol car’s interior and the officer didn’t try to escape, he was certain of it.

Meszoly cursed and launched into evasive action, yanking on the steering wheel, almost avoiding the second rocket that sped toward them. Instead of catching the SUV dead center as the shooter had intended, the warhead slammed into the Mercedes’s right rear quarter panel.

Flames wreathed the rear of the SUV and the force knocked the vehicle over onto its left side. Heat filled the interior at once as Sabre jerked helplessly in the five-contact seat belt harness. The air bag blew out and slammed into his chest like a giant fist. The stench of cordite filled the air, and the detonation rang against his ears and stole part of his hearing. He tasted blood in his mouth.

“This is Black Legion One,” Sabre called over his headset. “We need assistance. Our vehicle has been disabled.” He slipped a combat knife from his vest, flicked the blade open and sawed through the seat belt. “Does anyone copy?”

“Copy, Black Legion One. Ten is on your six.”

Through the cracked windshield, Sabre watched as another SUV pulled in front of the one he was in, providing partial cover. The men in that vehicle deployed in two two-man groups and laid down suppressive fire.

Sabre gave up on trying to open his door. He drew his pistol and slammed the butt into the window, shattering the safety glass so he could pull it out. “Do you see the shooters?”

The radio crackled in response. “We have the shooters, One. Two of them at eleven o’clock. One of them is down. The other is running.”

“Get me some ID on these people if you can.”

“Roger.”

“These people are in heavier than expected.” Sabre pulled himself through the window and crouched, leathering his weapon and then extending his hand down to Meszoly. “Watch yourselves.”

“Copy that.”

Meszoly grabbed Sabre’s hand and allowed himself to be helped as he clambered up from the overturned vehicle. “This can’t be about Krauzer,” he said, then wiped blood from his split lips with the back of his hand. “That man is more self-indulgent than important. This is about something else.”

The Merovingian kings, Sabre thought. That’s what this is about. Still, so many years had passed since those days and the time of Matthias Corvinus. Something that had been lost for so long couldn’t just reappear. And who would be so interested in finding it?

Dyson broke through the rear passenger window as the heat of the burning vehicle swirled over them. Blood ran from two cuts on the side of his face and dripped from his chin. Still, he seemed steady enough as he reached back inside the SUV and hauled out the man he’d been seated with. Sabre helped Dyson because the other man was unconscious. Together, they hauled the man’s deadweight from the stricken vehicle just before the gas tank exploded and knocked them to the ground.

Rising again, Sabre told Dyson to stay with the unconscious man. Then he and Meszoly headed toward the target building, taking cover where they could. One of the men who’d wielded a rocket launcher lay bleeding on the ground and managed to pull his sidearm. Sabre shot the man in the face and leaped over the corpse. Behind him, two other police cars pulled into the parking lot, sirens howling. They rolled to a stop on either side of the burning patrol car.

“Black Legion Nine.” Sabre reached the next clearing and peered across the open area separating him from the next building. The helicopters continued circling above, but their attention was split between their mission goal and the arrival of Sabre’s people and the police. “This is Black Legion One.”

“Go, One. Nine copies.” Saadiya Bhattacharjee’s British accent sounded unflappable. She’d been born to a Sikh family in Telangana, India, and had finished her education in crisis communication at Oxford. Sabre had hired her immediately when their paths crossed three years ago, headhunting her from other corporations by promising her a more exciting career than patching political careers and spin-doctoring bad products put out by corporations.

“I need you to interface with the local police,” Sabre said. “Let them know we’re on the job.”

“Copy that.”

“And don’t get shot.”

Saadiya laughed, then said, “Ta.”

Taking his smartphone from his tactical vest, Sabre pulled up the GPS locator he had that connected him to Krauzer’s position inside the building. All of his clients were programmed into his locator systems. He and Meszoly were only 179 meters out and closing fast. He broke into a run with Meszoly following behind and to the right so they’d both have established fields of fire.

* * *

ANNJA HEARD KRAUZER before she saw him. Orta followed in her wake, crouched as she was. When she reached the door, she stood and peered through the small window beside the closed entrance. Inside, the soft glow of a cell phone revealed where Krauzer was.

The director knelt under a computer desk in a dark room and spoke in a hoarse whisper that carried. “Sabre! Where are you? I’m in trouble!”

Annja tried the door but it was locked.

“Allow me.” Orta stepped forward. “Most of the classrooms on this floor open with the same key to facilitate matters.”

She stepped back and allowed the professor access to the door. He took a set of keys from his pocket and started sorting through them.

Keeping calm in spite of the tension that filled her, Annja divided her focus between the hallway and the shattered wall of windows. She’d noted the second helicopter circling the building, as well, and kept expecting one or the other to sweep in. She still didn’t know what the explosions outside the building had been about.

After succeeding in unlocking the door, Orta opened it and entered. The yellow rectangle of the hallway lights fell into the dark room. He started to reach for the lights but caught himself before Annja pointed out that wouldn’t be a good idea.

“What are you doing?” Krauzer glared up at them. “Get out of here! This is my hiding spot!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Orta turned away from him and faced Annja.

“They’re after me.” Holding the crystal between his knees, Krauzer waved his free hand at Orta, keeping him away. “You’re leading them right to me.”

“They’re after all of us.”

“Really? Really? You’re here every day, so these guys just happen to show up tonight to get you and I’m unlucky enough to get caught in the middle of that? Do you even hear yourself?”

“They’re totally happy to kill all of us,” Orta stated. “They want the crystal.”

Krauzer wrapped his free arm around the crystal and turned his attention to the phone. “You need to get here. Now!”

“You know, if they get him, maybe they’ll leave us alone,” Orta said.

“Wait.” Krauzer wasted no time thinking about that. He grabbed hold of the desk and partially scuttled out from hiding. “You can’t just desert me. We need to stick together.”

Shaking his head, Orta looked back at Annja.

She slipped her miniflashlight from her backpack, switched it on and swept the high-intensity beam around the classroom. It was larger than she’d initially thought, actually built like a small auditorium with stadium seating. The only other door out of the room was on the same side of the wall.

Voices echoed outside in the hallway, and she knew they were out of running room.

9

“Get down.” Annja switched off the miniflashlight as she closed the door softly and locked it behind her. The barrier was too flimsy to put up much resistance, but maybe the men looking for them would hurry on by. On the other side of the door, police sirens screamed and the whop-whop-whop of the helicopter rotors was somewhat muted.

“Up there.” She pointed Orta to the highest seat. “Stay away from the windows and hide in the corner—otherwise you’ll be skylined against the outside lights.”

Clutching the manuscript case to his chest, Orta sprinted up the long steps and hunkered down behind the curved row of tables. He disappeared in the inky pools of shadows, and Annja hoped that he would be safe during the coming confrontation.

Sliding back under the desk, Krauzer drew his legs farther into the darkness, but the phone’s light illuminated his face.

“Turn off the phone.” Annja slid the machine pistol out of the backpack and readied it.

Reluctantly, with a last whispered command to whoever was listening, Krauzer broke the connection and pocketed the phone. He held on to the crystal with both arms, and Annja didn’t know if he was trying to protect the object or hide behind it.

Quietly, breathing evenly, Annja put her back to the front wall, where both doors were, staying away from the gleaming whiteboard behind her so she wouldn’t be easily seen. She waited, willing herself to be calm.

Out in the hallway, the voices quieted. Annja didn’t know if the men looking for them had passed or if they were listening on the other side of the locked doors. A moment later, the door handle on her right twisted with a soft metallic click.

The gunman pushed the door open with a foot, letting the light from the hallway into the room. His dark shadow shifted slightly.

Annja waited, resisting the impulse to shoot the man in the foot, even though he was dressed like the other men they’d encountered. Wounding the man while they were trapped in the room wouldn’t help. A wounded man could call out for reinforcements, and if he was the only man, once she put him down, they might be able to get free.

The other door opened more, letting Annja know the attack was going to come from two fronts by an unknown number of attackers. She kept calm, knowing everything was going to come down to split-second reaction time.

A whispered conversation she couldn’t make out took place in the hall. Then the first man shouldered his way into the room with his weapon tucked in close to his shoulder. The noise outside became louder immediately.

As soon as the gunman breached the entrance, Annja opened fire, aiming for the man’s shoulder and letting the machine pistol rise until the rounds hammered the man in the neck and the side of his head.

Dead, dying or unconscious, the man dropped as the second door exploded open.

Annja whirled, trying to cover the second entrance and knowing the gunman there had seen her muzzle flashes reflected in the dark windows on the other side of the room. He would know where she was standing. She whirled, but the man was already firing. At least one of his bullets struck her machine pistol and tore it from her hands, while the others dug into the wall behind her with jackhammer impacts.

Deserting her position against the wall, Annja slid and dropped behind the desk at the front of the room. As she came up again, she reached into the Otherwhere for the sword and instantly felt the hilt, sure and steady in her hand.

The sword looked plain and simple, three feet of double-edged steel forged in a simple cross pattern. The weapon was a warrior’s instrument, designed to kill and maim, meant to be carried onto a battlefield.

Annja rose on the other side of the desk while the gunman searched for her. His eyes hadn’t gotten used to the gloom trapped in the classroom, and he fired again, missing her by inches as she raced at him. The heat of the bullets burned across her cheek and the muzzle flashes lit up his hard face, hiding him in the sudden intense illumination.

Holding the leather-bound sword hilt in both hands, Annja slashed at the machine pistol as the gunman tried to correct his aim. The blade sliced through the weapon, cutting the suppressor and barrel from the machine pistol and knocking what was left from the man’s hand. He reached for the pistol at his hip but didn’t get to it before she put the sword’s point through his throat.

Bleeding, frantic, the man fell back into the hallway and tried to stem the wound in his neck.

“Annja, look out!” Orta called from the back of the room.

She’d already caught a peripheral glimpse of the third man coming through the door the first man had, and she took shelter in the door frame. Bullets drummed a lethal beat on the door, tearing through the wood.

The gunman, in a Kevlar mask and body armor, fired a couple bursts toward the back of the room. The windows there shattered and Orta cried out in pain. More of the outside pandemonium poured into the building.

“Get up, Krauzer!” The gunman kept his weapon pointed in Annja’s direction as he spoke to the director under the desk at the side of the room. Annja thought she detected a French accent, but her hearing was cottony from the noise in the room. “You can carry that crystal or I can take it out of your dead hands!”

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” Krauzer climbed out from under the desk on one hand and his knees. He carried the crystal in the other hand.

Annja glanced at the back of the room but she couldn’t see Orta. Frustrated, she watched as Krauzer joined the gunman in the hallway. She thought briefly of trying to reach the doorway but knew that she would be cut down by gunfire before she got to the man.

The gunman yanked Krauzer to one side. The director followed his captor’s snarled directions as they pulled back out of the room. Lifting the weapon in front of him, the gunman fired at the second door, driving Annja from her hiding place and back into the room.

Sliding into place beside the door, availing herself of the scant cover, Annja watched helplessly as the gunman pulled Krauzer farther down the hallway. Trusting that the director was safe for the moment, she turned her attention to Orta. The illumination from the open doors revealed where the machine pistol had landed after being ripped from her hands. She scooped up the weapon on her way back to the professor.

As Annja approached, Orta tried to raise himself from the floor, but his hand slipped in the blood that had gushed from the wound in his abdomen. His lips trembled and his eyes were wide with fear. He held his free hand to the wound.

“Lie back.” Placing the machine pistol to one side and letting the sword return to the Otherwhere, Annja put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him back against the carpeted floor.

“They shot me.” Orta pulled his hand from his wound and tried to examine it, but blood soaked his shirt.

“It’ll be okay.” Annja ripped his shirt open, searching for the wound. She slipped her miniflashlight from her pocket and switched it on, then clamped it between her teeth as she angled the beam on the gunshot. “You’re going to be okay. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah.” Orta nodded, but he was shaking and his eyes unfocused and refocused as he fought the onset of shock.

“We’re going to stop this bleeding and the paramedics will be here soon.” The warm blood gushed over Annja’s fingers as she shrugged off her short-waisted jacket and the green pullover she was wearing. The jacket material was too coarse, but the pullover was soft enough to work as a compress.

“Sounds good.” He seemed to be on the verge of sleep.

“Stay with me, Vincent.”

“I will. I’m just going to close my eyes.”

“No. You need to stay awake. I’m going to roll you over for just a moment.”

“Sure.”

Putting her free arm under the man, Annja rolled him onto his unwounded side briefly. His back was whole, letting her know the bullet was still inside him. Having only one wound to control was better, but there was no way to know if the bullet had bounced around inside and torn through other blood vessels.

She hoped help arrived soon. Concentrating on her patient, she kept the compress in place and reached for her sat phone.

* * *

ON THE TOP FLOOR of the building, Sabre sprinted as fast as he dared, aware that a gunman could be around the next corner. So far, though, the only men he’d seen were dead. Someone with Krauzer knew how to shoot.

According to the GPS signal on Sabre’s phone, he was only forty-three meters from Krauzer, but that didn’t indicate which floor he was on. Sabre had followed the trail of violence to his current position.

At least two men lay sprawled in the hallway ahead of him, coming out of both doors. One man’s feet lay in the way of the door. Another man had fallen out into the hallway, visible from his head to his knees. He lay on his back and the slash in his throat no longer fountained blood, indicating that his heart had stopped pumping. Both of them were in the same uniforms and armor that the other men had been wearing.

“Watch out!” Meszoly’s hand fell heavily onto Sabre’s shoulder and drove him down.

They hit the ground just as a helicopter outside the building opened fire. Heavy 7.62 mm rounds chopped through the glass and left fist-size holes in the wall and tore the display cases to pieces, spilling books and artifacts across the tiles.

Rolling onto his side, Sabre brought up the machine pistol and aimed at the helicopter’s gunner, centering on the muzzle flashes spewing from the weapon. The machine gun fell silent almost immediately and Sabre pushed himself to his feet, his ears ringing.

Looking through the empty space where the window had been, boots crunching on shards, Sabre dropped the empty magazine from his weapon and reloaded. He knew without looking that Meszoly had his back. Holding the machine pistol steady, Sabre fired bursts into the pilot, watching the glass around the man flare out around him.

The helicopter went out of control, diving and listing, coming around in a slow semicircle into one of the buildings.

“Get down!” Sabre turned from the window an instant before the rotors struck the building.

Meszoly threw himself down and rolled toward the outer hallway wall, seeking shelter. When the rotors struck the building, they turned into a screaming cloud of shrapnel that peppered everything around them. The helicopter exploded in an orange-and-black fireball that cast wavering light into the hallway.

Getting to his feet, Sabre checked the doorways in the hallway and saw no new movement. He checked the GPS and saw that the distance separating him from Krauzer hadn’t changed. The movie director was either down or he was in the stairwell.

Not wanting to leave anything to chance, Sabre ran to the darkened room and halted at the wall beside the dead man. He flicked on the miniflashlight clipped to the side of the machine pistol’s barrel and scanned the room. He stopped on the half-naked woman pointing a machine pistol at him while on her knees in front of a man lying in the corner of the room.

The woman didn’t flinch and Sabre respected that about her. She held his gaze easily and looked capable.

“I’ve got a wounded man here who needs medical attention.” She spoke calmly without taking her eyes from Sabre.

For a moment, Sabre thought she was talking to him. Then he spotted the phone glowing on the floor beside her.

“He’s been shot in the stomach and is going into shock.” The woman described where she was.

“Are you in danger at the moment?” a man asked over the phone’s speaker.

The woman waited, staring at Sabre.

He lifted the machine pistol and held his other hand up, as well. “I’m looking for Krauzer.”

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