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Serpent's Kiss
Alex Archer


Some say they are a cursed people. But those who try to find them will be just as unlucky… Working on a dig on the southern coast of India, the last thing Annja Creed expects is to be hit by a tsunami. Or to strike archaeological gold. But that's exactly what happens when several objects wash ashore in the storm.The relics carry unfamiliar markings that hint at a legendary city. Excited by the prospect of discovering a culture believed lost to civilization, Annja embarks on a perilous journey deep into the heart of danger.She learns of a mysterious artifact that could provide clues to the whereabouts of the lost city, which means trekking through an inhospitable jungle and forbidding terrain. But nature's denizens and death traps are not the only threats: someone else is also pursuing the prize. Just as Annja's grail comes into view, she must ward off an even greater evil. Because deep in the Nilgiris mountains is a race of people that the world forgot.And they don't like strangers.








ROGUE ANGEL







Serpent’s Kiss

Alex Archer





www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)




Special thanks and acknowledgment to Mel Odom for his contribution to this work.




Contents


Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Epilogue




Prologue


Kaveripattinam, India

509 B.C.

Sahadeva held the porcelain plate and pretended to examine it as he scanned the marketplace behind him. His heart, already beating quickly, nearly exploded when he saw their pursuers.

“They’re still there, Sahadeva.”

Jyotsna’s whisper barely reached Sahadeva’s ears. He felt her trembling at his side. The marketplace offered untold terrors for her. She’d never been in a place so big or so filled with people. Knowing that they had enemies nearby only made things worse.

Carefully, so he wouldn’t incur the ire of the merchant, Sahadeva replaced the plate on the stack. The merchant started haggling, but the attempt lacked passion. Sahadeva’s worn and dirty clothing warned all of the shopkeepers and traders that he lacked money.

After thanking the man and praising his goods, Sahadeva took Jyotsna’s hand and led her toward the alley at the shop’s side. He touched the curved knife in the sash at his waist. He’d never killed a man before. He didn’t even like slaughtering the goats to put on the family table.

But he knew he would kill the men who pursued them in order to protect Jyotsna.

She looked like a child next to him. The top of her head barely came to his shoulder. Even draped in a loose dark-blue sari anyone could see that she had a woman’s curves. Sahadeva worried her beauty might bring trouble to them in the city. A plain dupatta covered her head and held her thick black hair out of her face.

Sahadeva was young and slim. All of his life he’d been a goatherd. Nearly a year ago, when he’d turned seventeen, he’d run away from home to join a group of young men who’d decided to take a boat up the Vaigai River. Legends of gold and silver, of lost fortunes and fantastic monsters, had beckoned.

When he’d left, Sahadeva had known his father would be angry with him and his mother would be disappointed. Three days into the journey, he’d been frightened and doubtful despite the stories of adventure. Nine days later, just when they’d been about to exhaust their stores and forced to return home empty-handed, he’d seen Jyotsna and fallen in love with her.

She’d wanted to see the big world he described. Her father had denied that to her as he had denied it to all his people. Only the warriors had ventured outside the cave city to get food. Occasionally they brought brides and grooms back into their secret village.

Those brides and grooms, he’d discovered, had only been allowed to live there for a short time. Outsiders were put to death once the children were planted. Sahadeva had seen monstrous things among Jyotsna’s people. There was no sign of anyone who had come from outside their enclave to live among them.

Jyotsna had captured Sahadeva’s heart. And she had been equally drawn to him. Unable to bear the thought of his death, she had warned him of the coming assassinations. Sahadeva talked her into running away with him, and they fled.

Now all of his friends were dead. Jyotsna’s father’s warriors had killed them mercilessly. Only luck and his knowledge of the terrain along the Vaigai had prevented Sahadeva and Jyotsna from getting overtaken.

But those pursuers were here now. Even Kaveripattinam, as large as it was and open to trade around the world, wasn’t enough to hide them.

Sahadeva strode briskly through the marketplace, past the shops and hawkers, through the maze of goods and buyers, until he reached the alley. Voices, whistles, bells and animal bleats sounded all around him.

The buildings flanking the alley blocked some of the heat of the midmorning sun in the narrow expanse. By noon Sahadeva knew the stones beneath his callused feet would be blistering.

At the other end of the alley, he a saw the harbor spread out before him. Tall Roman galleys sat in the ocean. And there were more vessels from other countries.

Since he’d been a boy and his father had first allowed him to help drive goats to market, Sahadeva had loved the sea. The sailors with their stories of foreign lands and exotic sights had filled his head. When he’d talked to his father about such things, his father had told him to quit wasting his time dreaming. He’d said a goatherd would never have enough money to buy a ship, and taking passage on one as a sailor was nothing short of slavery.

Things change, Father, Sahadeva thought grimly. He approached a man arranging a cart filled with woven baskets. “Sir,” he said. “I’m looking for Harshad the jeweler.”

The man stroked his fingers in his long beard then pointed. “Harshad’s shop is in the next street. On the right.”

Sahadeva thanked him and got moving again. The crowd was thinner. He didn’t think the men who pursued them would do anything here, but there were no guarantees. They were desperate men. He’d taken more than Jyotsna when he’d left their city.



A BURLY MAN STOOD guard at the jeweler’s door. He looked half-asleep, but the sword through his sash was sharp and nicked from use. Scars showed on his thick arms.

When he started to enter, the guard put his big hand in the middle of Sahadeva’s chest and stopped him. “There’s no begging allowed in this shop.”

Despite his fear and the urgency that pressed him, Sahadeva’s pride burned. “I’m no beggar.” His hand dropped to his knife.

The guard smiled. “You’re wearing a beggar’s rags, boy. And I wouldn’t pull out that knife. Unless you’re ready to die.”

Sahadeva swallowed hard and felt his face burn with shame. “I’ve got business with Harshad.” He reached inside his shirt and took out a small oilskin pouch. Another oilskin bag was hidden inside the pack he carried, but thieves wouldn’t have wanted it. Still, he never left it unattended. “I have merchandise for sale.”

Sunlight glinted off the gold and gems inside the bag.

Jyotsna’s fingernails bit into Sahadeva’s arm. “What have you done?”

Sahadeva looked into her dark eyes. “I did what I had to so that we could be together.”

Tears glinted in her gaze and she looked away from him.

Sahadeva felt torn. He didn’t have time to explain. Jyotsna had always lived within her father’s village. She had no idea what the real world was like or what it took to live in it.

“Send the boy in here,” a man’s voice called from within the shop.

Reluctantly, the guard stepped aside.

Sahadeva moved forward. He had to pull on Jyotsna’s arm twice to get her to follow him.

Inside, the shop was small and heavily scented with incense. A thin man with graying hair and beard stood behind a counter. He wore a white tunic. Earrings, rings, necklaces, hair bands and gold-and-silver bangles hung from pegs on the wall behind him. Jewels sparkled in settings in some of them. Harshad smiled. “Welcome. What may I do for you?”

Sahadeva freed his arm from Jyotsna. He placed the oilskin pouch on the counter. “I want to trade these for gold coins.”

The jeweler spread the bag’s contents across the counter. Five rings, two bracelets and a loose collection of gems spread between them. Harshad looked at the jewelry with marked interest. “These are of very unusual design. Where did you get them?”

“I found them,” Sahadeva replied. “They were in the Vaigai River.”

The jeweler looked up. “Where in the Vaigai?”

Sahadeva shook his head. “There isn’t any more there.”

“Maybe you just didn’t look closely enough.”

“Then I’ll go back and look again.”

Harshad frowned. “You’ve been most fortunate, it seems.”

“How much?” Sahadeva asked.

“Are you in a hurry?”

“No,” Sahadeva lied. He’d learned at his father’s knee never to show impatience during a trade. A hasty man often got the worst of a bargain. A needy man fared even worse.

But what about a man who fears for his life? Sahadeva wondered.

“I could look at these and give you an offer tomorrow,” Harshad suggested.

“By that time I could get offers from other jewelers,” Sahadeva countered. “I was told I could get a fair price from you.”

“Wandering around the city could be dangerous,” Harshad said.

Sahadeva started gathering his treasure. “The ships are in. I want passage on one of them. Perhaps I can strike a deal with a captain who would trust his instinct for jewelry.”

“Wait,” Harshad said. He sighed. “I’m only going to do this because you look like a good boy. Although some might question if you really got these things from the river.”

Sahadeva held the bag tightly. He’d come to Harshad because he’d heard the man didn’t ask too many questions.

“Come with me.” Harshad gestured to a doorway draped by curtains. He stepped through them and waved again.

Sahadeva and Jyotsna followed him.

“Just you,” the jeweler said. “Back here I only deal one-on-one.”

Sahadeva hesitated, then turned to Jyotsna. “Stay here.”

She pulled on his arm. “Don’t leave me.”

“It’ll only be for a moment. You’ll be safe.” Sahadeva gently pulled her hands from his arm. Doing so almost broke his heart because her fear showed in her liquid gaze. “I’ll be right back. I promise.”

Jyotsna wrapped her arms around herself. As she stood there, she looked incredibly small.

Sahadeva made himself turn and follow the jeweler to the back room of the shop.

“Sit, sit.” Harshad gestured toward a chair on the other side of a small wooden table in the back room.

Sahadeva waved away the thick white smoke given off by the incense. Coils of the fragrant paste burned in every corner of the room. He sat at the table. The smoke made it hard to breathe and he immediately felt light-headed.

Harshad clapped his hands. Immediately an old woman appeared through another door and delivered a tea service. She poured cocum squash into tall glasses of water, then left without a word.

Sahadeva’s taste buds flooded at the drink’s scent. He and Jyotsna had subsisted on bread, goat’s cheese and water. Cocum squash was only available in April and May. He’d almost missed the season entirely. He picked up the glass and felt the chill.

“Let me again examine what you have,” Harshad said. He smiled once more.

Sahadeva saw the anticipation in the man’s face. Harshad clearly wanted the jewelry and gems. Slowly, Sahadeva emptied the pouch onto the table. The heavy gold smacked into the wood. The sound echoed strangely in Sahadeva’s ears.

“You found these in the Vaigai River, you say?” Harshad examined one of the rings.

“Yes,” Sahadeva said. He sipped his drink. The flavor was strong and cool.

“You’re lucky. Many men have searched that river for treasure,” Harshad said.

“I know.”

“Some soothsayers still insist there is a secret city with impossible wealth located there.”

Sahadeva’s heart thudded and his head swelled from the pressure. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said.

“It is supposed to be a city of naga s,” Harshad said as he moved on to examine a bracelet. “Half men, half snakes. Have you ever seen such a thing?”

“No.” But Sahadeva knew well the old stories and legends told of such things.

“They lived on an island, it’s said. Then the monsoon season brought a wave that broke their island and drove them inland. They tried to live on the mainland, but they worshiped snakes and practiced bloodthirsty rituals. No one would suffer them to live there. So they fled upriver.”

Sahadeva listened without comment. He had to force himself to breathe. He wanted out of the room. Anxiety crawled over him at the thought of leaving Jyotsna with the burly guard. It was worse thinking about her father’s warriors lurking in the street.

“Do you think these things came from that city?” Harshad asked.

Sahadeva’s heartbeat became thunder in his ears. He was certain the jeweler could hear it. “No,” he lied.

“Why not?” Harshad asked.

“No one has ever proved that city ever existed,” Sahadeva said. No one had ever found the tributary Sahadeva and his friends had found, either. It went underground for a time, and if Pramath hadn’t gone hunting that morning they might never have found it, he thought.

“Still,” Harshad mused, “there is usually some kernel of truth in those old legends.”

Sahadeva said nothing. He pulled at his collar in an effort to get more air. Heat flushed his face. He forced air into his lungs.

“I’ve even been told that the things that have been found from the naga city are cursed,” Harshad said.

“Cursed?” Sahadeva’s mind tried to grasp the word but it slipped away.

“I’ve been told,” Harshad said in a quiet voice, “that the naga spirits follow anything that was taken from their city. They find them and bring them back after killing those who stole them. Do you believe in curses?”

Sahadeva thought about that for a moment while he finished the rest of his drink. He’d never actually seen a curse in effect, but he’d heard stories about them all of his life. “I don’t know,” he finally said.

“Well, it’s better to keep an open mind, perhaps. When you’ve lived as many years as I have, you’ll learn the wise men don’t have all the answers.” Harshad pushed the jewelry and gems to the center of the table. “Now we must discuss what these are worth to you.”

For the next few minutes, they haggled over the price. Sahadeva knew not to take the first offer. Only a fool and an amateur took the first offer. His father had taught him that, as well.

Finally, they agreed upon an amount. Sahadeva didn’t know if it was fair, but it was more than he’d been hoping to get for the pieces. He was certain Harshad thought he’d gotten the better of the bargain.

Sahadeva wanted only enough to arrange passage on one of the ships in the harbor. He knew he and Jyotsna would have to start over somewhere new. Perhaps Greece or Rome would be a good choice. He might even like to see Egypt. Those countries accepted foreigners.

Besides, he hadn’t shown Harshad the full treasure they’d escaped with.

“I must tell you one thing,” Harshad said at the end of the negotiations. “If these things are indeed cursed, I expect you to take them back. Is this understood?”

Sahadeva readily agreed. He didn’t believe in the curse. Even so, he would be long gone in just a matter of hours if he could find a ship putting out to sea in that time.

“I will return with your gold.” Harshad got up and left the room. He left the jewelry and gems sitting on the table.

Sahadeva felt his head grow heavier. When he turned to look at the window high on the wall, his senses whirled. He realized the colors seemed brighter than normal, and the sounds coming from outside were leaden and muffled.

Something was wrong.

He tried to stand but his legs were almost too weak to hold his weight. He gasped for air and choked on the thick incense smoke. He tried to sweep the jewelry and gems into the pouch again, but only succeeded in scattering them across the table and the floor.

A cloud of smoke suddenly burst inside the room. A loud hiss accompanied it.

Startled, Sahadeva stumbled back against the wall. The acrid smoke burned his nose and throat when he inhaled it. Incredulous, he watched as a figure took shape.

The head and shoulders of a beautiful woman appeared first. Jeweled combs pinned her thick black hair atop her head. Her garments barely covered her modesty, like the garments Jyotsna’s people wore. She stood high-breasted and proud. She peered at him with the slit-irised eyes of a cat. Crimson lips parted to reveal sharp teeth. Her forked tongue slithered out to test the air.

As she moved toward Sahadeva, she rocked from side to side. Her lower half was hidden from sight by the smoke for a moment. When he saw the serpentine body that began at her waist, he tried to scream but there wasn’t enough air in the room.

From her midriff down, the woman was a snake. Glittering blue-green scales twisted as she moved. Black-and-red scales created a hard-edged pattern. In the next instant, she lunged at him and her fangs pierced his throat.



S AHADEVA WOKE to a pounding pain in his head. Blood roared in his ears. He felt dizzy, as if the world were shifting beneath him. He opened his eyes and discovered the reason for the movement.

He was in a ship’s hold. The light from a candle on a mounted sconce barely penetrated the gloom. He lay in the middle of a pool of vomit that he realized was his own. It had smeared on his clothing and made the fabric stiff. Iron manacles bound his legs to a ring set in the floor.

Where is Jyotsna? The question drove him to his feet in spite of the pain and sickness coiled in his belly. He immediately threw up again.

“Easy, now,” someone said from the darkness.

The ship tossed and turned. Timbers creaked in protest. The floor tilted so much for a moment that Sahadeva feared they were going to turn over.

Sahadeva tracked the voice and saw a man in his middle years sitting hunched against the wall. Nine others sat with him.

“Who are you?” Sahadeva asked. “What is this ship?”

“I’m a slave,” the man answered. “Like you. My name is Oorjit.”

“I’m not a slave,” Sahadeva objected.

“You lie in your own filth aboard a ship that you didn’t book passage on,” another man said. “You’re a slave. When the captain has outrun this storm, they’ll bring us up and start making sailors of us.”

“I’m afraid what he says is true,” Oorjit said. “All of us were taken in Kaveripattinam. The ships’ captains do this when they need crew and no one is willing to sign on. Lives are cheap in the city. Doubtless you were sold into captivity by someone who profited in the loss of your freedom.”

Sahadeva slumped in disbelief. His first thoughts were of Jyotsna. He’d brought her to the city and told her he could take care of her. He wept when he thought of the horrors he had doubtlessly left her to face.

The ship continued to roll. The movement grew more violent. Water sloshed around Sahadeva’s ankles and he thought it was growing deeper.

“Are you a soothsayer?” Oorjit asked.

Sahadeva looked at the man.

“The book you carried.” Oorjit tossed over Sahadeva’s battered travel pack. “I thought if you could read you were a soothsayer.”

Sahadeva couldn’t believe the pack had been left with him. He doubted the other gems and jewelry remained. He searched the bag and found he was correct. But the book lay there.

“Doubtless they couldn’t find anything in it worth stealing,” Oorjit stated. “Slavers aren’t readers.”

Sahadeva picked up the book and examined it. He’d stolen it from the treasure room in Jyotsna’s village. He knew wise men and kings often paid handsomely for such things.

It was a thick rectangle covered in some kind of hide. Sahadeva thought it was snakeskin, but he wasn’t sure. He felt the binding and made sure the thing he’d hidden there remained. He’d kept that from Harshad. Sahadeva had intended to use it to buy a business for himself whenever they got to where they were going.

Even though it remained, Sahadeva knew that the future he’d planned was gone. He replaced the book in its protective oilskin and shoved it under his shirt.

“Are you a wise man?” Oorjit asked.

“No,” Sahadeva answered.

“Pity,” the man said. “I think it would be good to have the ears of the gods in this storm.”

Sahadeva didn’t know how much time passed in the hold. The candle flame wavered as the ship heaved and rolled. Several times he felt as though the sea had pitched them into the air. As the sick fear grew inside him, he knew what was going to happen. It was only a matter of time.

Still, when it did occur he wasn’t prepared. The ship capsized. Water rushed into the hold. With his legs chained, he had no chance. Despite his best efforts and his most impassioned pleas, the cruel, uncaring sea swallowed him.




1


Annja Creed stood in a twelve-foot-deep sacrificial pit beneath a gathering storm. The storm, according to the weather reports, was hours away but promised to be severe. From the look of the skeletons on the floor of the pit and embedded in the walls, hundreds of years had passed since the last sacrifice.

The passage of time hadn’t made the discovery any less chilling. Even with her experience as an archeologist—and the recent exposures to sudden death that she thought were incited by the mystic sword she’d inherited—she still had to make the conscious mental shift from personal empathy to scientific detachment.

“Are those human bones?”

Annja glanced up and saw Jason Kim standing near the edge of the pit above her. Jason was a UCLA graduate student who’d won a place on Professor Rai’s dig along the southern coast of India.

Jason was barely over five and a half feet tall and slender as a reed. His long black hair blew in the strong wind summoned by the storm gathering somewhere over the Indian Ocean. Thick glasses covered his eyes, which were bloodshot from staying up too late playing PSP games in his tent. He came from a traditional Chinese family that hated the way he’d so easily acquired American ways. He wore a concert T-shirt and jean shorts. A tuft of whiskers barely smudged his pointed chin.

“They’re human bones,” Annja answered.

“You think they’re sacrifice victims?” Jason’s immediate interest sounded bloodthirsty, but Annja knew it was only curiosity.

“I do.” Annja knelt and scooped one of the skulls from the loose soil at the bottom of the pit. She indicated the uneven cut through the spine at the base of the skull. “Followers of Shakti favored decapitation.”

“Cool. Can I see that?” Jason held his hands out.

Annja only thought for a moment that the skull had once housed a human being. The truth was, in her work, the body left behind was as much a temporary shelter as the homes she unearthed and studied.

Jason’s field of study was forensic anthropology. His work primarily included what was left of a body. If anyone at the dig could identify the tool marks on the skeleton, it was Jason.

Annja tossed the skull up to him.

Jason caught the skull in both hands. It didn’t bother him that it was so fresh from the grave. His smile went from ear to ear. He rotated the skull in his fingers. “This is the bomb, Annja.”

“Glad you like it.”

“Think they’ll let me keep one?” he asked.

Part of Annja couldn’t believe he’d asked the question. The other part of her couldn’t believe she hadn’t expected it.

“Definitely not,” she answered.

“Too bad. Put a small, battery-operated red light inside and this thing would be totally rad. I could even have a friend of mine majoring in dentistry whip up some caps for the incisors. I’d be the first guy to have a genuine vampire skull.”

“Except for the genuine part. And you’d have to explain why the skull doesn’t turn to dust in sunlight,” Annja said.

“Not all vampires turn to dust. You should know that,” he replied.

“Vampires aren’t a big part of archaeology.” Annja turned her attention back to the other bones. She didn’t think she was going to learn a lot from the pit, but there were always surprises.

“I didn’t mean from archaeology,” Jason persisted. “I mean from your show.”

Annja sighed. No matter where she went, except for highly academic circles, she invariably ended up being known more for her work on Chasing History’s Monsters than anything else. The syndicated television show had gone international almost overnight, and was continuing to do well in the ratings.

Scenes from stories she’d done for the show had ended up on magazine covers, on YouTube and other television shows. Her producer, Doug Morrell, never missed an opportunity to promote the show.

“You ever watch the show?” Annja looked up at Jason and couldn’t believe she was having the conversation with him.

“Sure. The frat guys go nuts for it. So do the sororities. I mean, DVR means never having to miss a television show again.”

Terrific, Annja thought.

“Kind of divided loyalties, though,” Jason said. “The sororities watch you.” He shrugged. “Well, most of them do. The frat guys like to watch the show for Kristie.”

Okay, I really didn’t need to hear that, Annja thought.

Kristie Chatham, the other hostess of Chasing History’s Monsters, wasn’t a rival. At least, Annja didn’t see Kristie as such. Kristie wasn’t an archaeologist and didn’t care about history. Or even about getting the facts straight.

When Kristie put her stories together, they were strictly for shock value. As a result, Kristie’s stories tended to center on werewolves, vampires, serial killers and escaped lab experiments.

“You can’t go into a frat house without finding her new poster,” Jason went on.

“That’s good to know,” Annja said, then realized that maybe she’d responded a little more coldly than she’d intended.

“Hey.” Jason held his hands up in defense and almost dropped his newly acquired skull. He bobbled it and managed to hang on to it. “I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“No problem,” Annja said.

“I don’t know why you don’t do a poster,” Jason said. “You’re beautiful.”

Maybe if the comment hadn’t come from a geeky male in his early twenties who was five years her junior and had a skull under his arm, if she hadn’t been covered in dirt from the sacrificial pit and perspiring heavily from the gathering storm’s humidity, Annja might have taken solace in that compliment.

Dressed in khaki cargo shorts, hiking boots and a gray pullover, she stood five feet ten inches tall and had a full figure instead of the anorexic look favored by so many modeling agencies. She wore her chestnut-brown hair pulled back under a New York Yankees baseball cap. Her startling amber-green eyes never failed to capture attention.

“I don’t do a poster because I don’t want to end up on the walls of frat houses,” Annja said.

“Or ceilings,” Jason said. “A lot of guys put Kristie’s posters on the ceiling.”

Lightning flashed in the leaden sky and highlighted the dark clouds. Shortly afterward, peals of thunder slammed into the beach.

Jason looked up. “Man, this is gonna suck. I hate getting wet.”

“That’s part of the job,” Annja told him. “The other part is being too hot, too tired, too claustrophobic and a thousand other discomforts I could name.”

“I know. But that’s only if I stay with fieldwork. I’d rather get a job at a museum. Or in a crime lab working forensics.”

Annja was disappointed to hear that. Jason Kim was a good student. He was going to be a good forensic anthropologist. She couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to stay indoors in a job that could take them anywhere in the world.

Lightning flashed again. The wind shifted and swept into the pit where Annja stood. The humidity increased and felt like an impossible burden.

“I’m gonna go clean this up,” Jason said. “Maybe after we batten down the hatches, you can tell me more about who Shakti was.”

Annja nodded and turned her attention back to the burial site. The storm was coming and there was no time to waste.



W ITH CAREFUL DELIBERATION , Annja checked the scale representation of the burial pit she’d drawn. So far everything was going easily, but she suspected it was the calm before the storm.

The drawing looked good. She’d also backed up the sketch with several captured digital images using her camera. In the old days, archaeologists only had a pad and paper to record data and findings. She liked working that way. It felt as if it kept her in touch with the roots of her chosen field.

She stared at the body she’d exhumed. From the flared hips, she felt certain that the bones had been a woman. She resolved to have Jason make the final call on that, though.

Lightning flickered and thunder pealed almost immediately after. The storm was drawing closer.

“Annja.”

Glancing up, Annja spotted the elfin figure of Professor Lochata Rai, the dig’s supervisor. Lochata was only five feet tall and weighed about ninety pounds. She was in her early sixties, but still spry and driven. She wore khakis and looked ready for a trek across the Gobi Desert.

“It is time for you to rise up out of there. The rain is coming,” the professor said.

Annja looked past the woman at the scudding clouds that filled the sky. Irritation flared through her at the time she was losing.

“We must cover this excavation pit,” Lochata said. “Perhaps it will not rain too hard and we won’t lose anything.”

“I know. This really stinks because we just got down far enough to take a good look at what’s here,” Annja said.

Lochata squatted at the edge of the pit. She held her pith helmet in her tiny hands over her knees. “You’re too impatient. You have your whole life ahead of you, and history isn’t going anywhere. This site will be here tomorrow.”

“I keep telling myself that. But I also keep telling myself that once I finish this I can move on to something else.” Annja stowed her gear in her backpack.

Lochata shook her head. “You expect to find something exciting and different?”

“I hope to.” Annja pulled her backpack over her shoulder and climbed the narrow wooden ladder out of the pit. “I always hope to.”

“I do not.” Lochata offered her hand as Annja neared the top. “Finding something you did not expect means you didn’t do your research properly. It also means extra work and possibly having to call someone else in to verify what you have found.”

Annja understood that, but she also liked the idea of the new, the undiscovered and the unexpected. Lately, her life had been filled with that. She thought she was growing addicted to it.

Once on the ground outside the pit, Annja stood with her arms out from her sides as if she were going to take flight. The wind blew almost hard enough to move her. Perspiration had soaked her clothing.

“Drink.” Lochata held out a water bottle and smiled. “Hydrate or die.”

Annja smiled back and accepted the water. The rule was a basic one for anyone who challenged the elements. She opened the bottle and drank deeply.

The dig site was in the jungle fringe that bordered the Indian Ocean. Kanyakumari lay as far south on the Indian continent as a person could go. They were forty miles west of there on a cliff twenty-seven feet above sea level. The ocean stretched to the south under the whirling storm clouds. Whitecaps broke the dark-blue surface.

“What are you thinking?” Lochata asked.

Annja grinned self-consciously. She didn’t like to get caught daydreaming. The nuns who’d raised her in a New Orleans orphanage had worked hard to train that distraction out of her. It hadn’t worked.

“I was just thinking about how many ships have been through those waters,” Annja admitted.

“Ah, yes.” Lochata’s eyes glittered. “The Romans, the Egyptians, ships from China’s Ming Dynasty.”

“Vasco da Gama was the first European to sail the Indian Ocean,” Annja said. “He was looking for a trade route around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa.”

“The British took over after that,” Lochata said. “They brought their ships loaded with cannons and fought wars to control the area. The Dutch East India Company fought trade wars with the French and others.”

“It isn’t just history out there,” Annja said wistfully. “Sinbad sailed those seas, as well.”

Lochata laughed. “My, my. Bringing up fictional characters. You are the romantic, aren’t you?”

“I try not to be,” Annja said. “But if you think past this moment, if you see into the past, it’s hard not to be.” She paused as she watched the storm-tossed waves. “A lot of those ships didn’t make it across the ocean. Storms took them, they were lost in sea battles and sometimes ships just went down.”

“Or perhaps sea monsters got them,” Lochata said laughing.

“I don’t believe in sea monsters.” Over the past few years, Annja had learned to believe in a lot of things, but she hadn’t yet crossed paths with a sea monster.

“Perhaps not,” Lochata said. “But the sea is a cruel mistress. She takes what she wants. She breaks the weak and the foolish. And she gives back only what she wants to.”

Surprised, Annja looked at the older woman. “I didn’t know you were a poet.”

Lochata smiled and shook her head. “Not me. My husband. He’s been in the merchant marine since he was a boy.” Concern touched her dark features. “I worry about him a lot these days, but he won’t give up the sea. A few years ago, things were not so dangerous out on the water. There are too many pirates out here now. They take what they want, and they kill and destroy.”

Annja didn’t say anything. She knew the professor was right. Before leaving her home in Brooklyn, she’d researched the area’s past and present. The Indian Ocean pirates plying their trade were every bit as dangerous as the Shakti followers who had sacrificed so many innocents to their cruel goddess.

“We need to get everyone together,” Lochata said as she gazed at the storm clouds above them. “I think this is going to be a bad one.”

The wind picked up and rattled through the nearby trees.

“I thought monsoon season was over,” Annja said.

Worry tightened the lines of the older woman’s face. “It should be. I think this is something else.” She looked at Annja and smiled. “You don’t believe in curses, do you?”

Considering everything she’d been through since she’d found the final piece of Joan of Arc’s legendary sword, Annja wasn’t sure how to answer the question. Receiving the sword had changed her perspective on a lot of things.

“Not really,” Annja finally said.

“Neither do I,” Lochata agreed. “But we’ve been disturbing the final resting places of the dead. That’s taboo in almost every culture.”




2


“You’re in India?”

Annja held the satellite phone to her ear and strained to hear. “Yes, Doug. India.”

Doug Morrell, her producer, was twenty-two and excitable. He asked questions, but he only heard what he wanted to hear.

“India, as in half-a-world-away India?” Doug asked.

“Yes.” Annja stood in the main tent and gazed out at the jungle. She and Professor Rai had gathered the dig team together.

Normally a break in the dull routine of digging would have been welcome. However, now they were all trapped in the leaking tent and hoping it would stay erect against the gale-force winds.

A torrential downpour slammed the surrounding jungle and reduced visibility to little more than a few yards. Beyond that everything turned gray and disappeared in the dark night. Annja could barely hear Doug over the crackle caused by lightning strikes and the heavy rain pounding against the canvas.

“What are you doing there?” Doug asked.

“I signed on to do a dig with Professor Lochata Rai.”

“Uh-huh. So what’s he digging up?”

“She.”

“Okay. What’s she digging up?”

“Professor Rai got permission from the Archaeological Survey of India to look for a Shakti sacrifice site.”

“Did you just say sacrifice? ” Doug’s voice rose.

“I did.” Annja regretted telling him that detail at once. If she hadn’t been distracted by the building storm she wouldn’t have.

“ Human sacrifices?” Doug asked.

“And animal.” Annja heard a keyboard clatter to life.

“Are you digging up human or animal bones?”

“Today we uncovered a pit containing several human skeletons.”

“Bodacious.” Doug’s excitement grew. “Always interested in pieces on human sacrifice. Who did you say was doing the sacrifices?”

“Followers of Shakti.” Annja spelled it out for him. She glanced back into the tent and saw the dig crew seated around long folding tables on a collection of lawn chairs.

Everyone on the crew was young. Most workers on archaeological excavations were interns or students. Generally there was barely enough money to fund a team with provisions, much less to make a profit. They sat playing board games, reading or telling stories. None of them acted like the storm worried them, but Annja knew they were concerned.

She was concerned.

“Shakti,” Doug said. “Consort of Shiva.”

“That’s her.” Annja sipped green tea from a bottle. It was one of her few extravagances for the dig. “That’s not something you would know. You’re looking on the Internet, aren’t you?”

“You gotta love Wikipedia,” Doug said.

Annja had written or corrected more than a few entries on subjects on the site.

“Wasn’t Shiva the god of death or something?” Doug asked.

Annja really didn’t want to get into a lesson on Hinduism. That would be a long discussion and Doug would only hear what he wanted.

“Yes,” she replied. It was the simplest answer. Annja knew, as with all Hindu gods, Shiva was much more than one thing.

“This human-sacrifice thing has potential. We haven’t done a piece on a god of death in months,” Doug said.

“I’m not doing a story,” Annja said. “I’m here to work a dig.”

“I know, I know. I was just wondering if there was a way we could get a twofer.”

“I’m not interested in a twofer. I came out here to work.”

“Hey, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

Annja swallowed a sharp retort. She couldn’t complain about the television show. Chasing History’s Monsters had been good to her. Real archaeology didn’t pay a lot. To be part of Lochata’s dig Annja had had to pay her own way over. The community meals were free and the cot was a loaner. She had to buy her own bottled green tea.

The television show offered the glamour and glory. It also came with a paycheck that enabled her to do things like this dig.

“Okay.” Annja stared out at the dark sky. She couldn’t see the edge of the cliff. The crash of the surf against the rocks below remained audible.

“Okay what?” Doug asked.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Annja Creed stalks mysterious cult that carries out human sacrifices.”

“This particular cult’s been dead for hundreds of years. Probably more than a thousand.”

“They gotta have descendants, right?” Doug asked.

“Possibly, but I wouldn’t know how to get in contact with—”

“I’m looking at a news story that says these Shakti cultists have been up to their old tricks in different parts of India.”

“Old tricks?” Annja asked.

“Creative license on my part,” Doug said. “Makes them sound more devious and threatening. Ups their coolness quotient, trust me. Anyway, there are Shakti cultists springing up. No human sacrifices have been found yet, but that may be because they’ve hidden the bodies. Or buried them.”

Annja could tell Doug was selling himself on the idea.

“Maybe you could take some footage of the local jungle as you make your way through a forgotten trail.”

“If it was a forgotten trail,” Annja said, “I wouldn’t know about it.”

“Of course you would. You’re a world-famous archaeologist.”

Annja smiled a little at that. If Doug hadn’t been trying so hard to flatter her, she might have enjoyed his efforts. But she’d known him long enough to be aware that he seldom did anything without an ulterior motive.

“How much longer are you going to be there?” Doug asked.

“A few more weeks.”

“See? You can work in a piece on human sacrifices,” he said.

“I’m busy. When you work a dig, you’re putting in eighteen-to twenty-hour days.”

“Don’t you have a day off?”

“When I do, I like to have it as a day off.” So far there hadn’t been one of those. Annja watched one of the students run back through the jungle from the cliff area. The young woman’s boots splashed across the drenched ground. Panic pulled her face tight. She was one of Professor Rai’s students and knew the area well. If she was frightened, there had to be a reason.

“Doug,” Annja interrupted as he launched into a guilt-inspiring speech, “I’m going to have to call you back.” She closed the phone and put it into her pocket. She knew Doug hated being hung up on and wasn’t surprised when he called right back. Annja ignored the ring tone and lunged out into the driving rain.

Lochata ran out to meet the student and reached her before Annja. The older woman grabbed the younger one by the shoulders and forced her to calm enough to talk. They spoke rapidly in their native tongue, and Annja didn’t understand a word. The student kept gesturing toward the cliff.

Her boots heavy with the mud that had collected on them, Annja joined the professor and student. Rivulets ran down the bill of Annja’s baseball cap, and she was drenched at once. She reached into the otherwhere and felt the sword. The hilt felt familiar in her hand and she took comfort in it.

From the reddened state of the student’s eyes, Annja knew she was crying. But the tears mixed in with the rain so quickly they disappeared at once.

“What’s wrong?” Annja asked.

Lochata gathered the young woman into her embrace for a moment, then spoke soothingly to her and pushed her toward the main tent. Immediately the professor headed toward the cliff. “She says the sea has withdrawn,” Lochata stated.

“Withdrawn?” Annja matched the older woman’s stride.

“Receded.”

“An outgoing tide will do that.”

“She says this is more than just the tide.” Lochata’s face looked grave.

Annja studied the irregular line of broken rocks at the foot of the cliff. They had been at the dig site for five days. She’d walked out to the cliff on several occasions to take a break from digging through the hard-packed earth and stared out at the ocean.

She’d never seen the rocks or that much of the sea bottom before. As she watched, the water seemed to draw back even more.

“The sea’s never done that before,” Annja said.

Lochata’s face drained of color. She turned to face Annja. “Tsunami,” she said, and the hammering thunder overhead almost swept her words away.

Fear shook Annja.

The horrifying images of the December 26, 2004, tsunami had shocked the world. And the devastating waves killed a quarter of a million people. She grabbed Lochata’s arm. “Run!” She pushed the older woman into motion.

Despite her age, the archaeology professor proved fleet-footed. She ran through the dig site and avoided the pits the team had dug in their search for the sacrificial well.

Together, they ducked through the trees and scrambled through the bushes. Lochata stumbled and would have fallen twice, but Annja caught her and kept her vertical. Then, just when the tents became visible, the ground shook so hard that Lochata and Annja both lost their footing and went down.

Mud coated Annja’s clothing and the right side of her face. She wiped it out of her right eye and tried to ignore the burning sensation it caused. She pushed herself up and hauled Lochata to her feet.

Unable to stop herself, Annja looked back toward the sea. In the distance, barely discernible through the haze of fog, a giant wall of water raced toward the coast.

For one frozen second, Annja stood locked in place. Even with everything she’d seen with Roux and Garin, she wasn’t prepared for the tsunami wave. It was a huge, rolling curl of ocean that was closing on the shoreline quickly.

At first Annja had hoped that the cliff might be above the crest line of the tsunami. The wave that had struck the coastline in 2004 was reportedly 108 feet high. Annja couldn’t tell how high the water was, but she could see it was higher than the cliff.

The site crew stared at the approaching wave in open-mouthed horror. Then the screaming started.

“Get into the trees!” Annja yelled. “Climb the trees!”

She didn’t know if that would work, but there was no way they were going to outrun the wave. Climbing was the only option.

“The trees!” Annja yelled again.

Lochata gave more orders in her native tongue.

The dig crew started climbing trees as another tremor shook the ground. Annja had a quick image of the cliff shearing off and plunging into the sea with them on it. It was a terrifying thought.

She ducked into the small tent she’d been issued, grabbed her backpack and slid it over one shoulder. On her way to the nearest tree, she took a coil of rope with a grappling hook from the back of one of the four-wheel-drive vehicles they had to help with transportation.

Rope was always important on a dig, and she knew it would come in handy while they were in the trees. If nothing else, they could use it to lash their supplies together or as a safety line until the floodwaters subsided.

The ground rumbled again. The approaching wave drowned out all other sounds.

Nearby, one of the young men opened the door to one of the SUVs and tried to clamber inside. Annja grabbed the young man’s shoulder. She pulled him out onto the muddy ground harder than she’d intended. He hit the ground and rolled, but fear gave him springs and he bounced up at once.

“What are you doing?” the young man demanded. His name was Nigel. He was one of the Brits on the team. He’d been something of a troublemaker who didn’t always pull his full shift and couldn’t be counted on to be thorough. Many of the team had started resenting him.

“If you climb in that vehicle you’re going to drown,” Annja shouted over the growing roar.

“We can’t stay here, you bloody cow!” Nigel started for the SUV again.

Annja moved into his path.

Nigel threw a vicious punch at Annja’s head.

Annja shifted, dropped her hips to lower her center of gravity, blocked his punch with the back of her left wrist and turned it outside, away from her head. She responded with a jab and almost caught him full in the face with it before she opened her hand to slap him.

The young man went down again. This time he remained on his hands and knees for a moment while his senses whirled. He spit curses.

Ignoring the venom in his tone, Annja grabbed him by the shoulder and hustled him to the nearest tree large enough to support their weight. Four other site workers had already taken refuge among the thick branches.

“Higher!” Annja shouted.

The others clambered higher.

“Get up the tree, Nigel.” Annja pressed him against the rough bark of the teak tree.

Teak grew freely in southern India, especially in the Tamil Nadu district. The trees towered over a hundred feet and provided plenty of branches for the climbers to use to haul themselves up.

Growling curses, Nigel climbed the tree. Annja followed just as the wave smashed into the cliff face hard enough to make the ground shiver. In the next instant, the wave rolled into Annja like a battering ram and knocked her into the tree trunk with enough force to stun her.

The rough bark smashed into the side of her face, and burning pain followed. She hung on to the tree out of desperation, but as she realized her grip would hold, the wave rolled over her. In the next second she was underwater and drowning.




3


Annja clung to the bark and hoped it didn’t give way beneath her fingers. All she saw was swirling water. The floodwaters muted her hearing, but she heard her heart beating frantically. Stay calm, she told herself. You’re going to be all right.

She knew from experience that she was prone to tell herself that lie every time things turned out badly.

She tilted her head back and looked up the tree. She couldn’t tell how high the water went. She felt the tree quiver under the onslaught of the flood.

Staying underwater wasn’t an option. Grimly, Annja slid her arms and legs up the trunk and felt the bark bite deeply into her bare flesh. She crept up slowly, only inches at a time.

Just as her lungs felt near to burst, her head broke the surface. She managed a quick breath and turned seaward. Another wave slapped her in the face and almost knocked her from her precarious hold. She caught a branch above her head and hauled herself out of the water.

Almost full dark had rolled in with the tsunami. Annja surveyed the trees for the survivors. The roar of the water made conversation almost impossible. But she heard her name.

“Annja!” A flashlight beam lanced through the darkness.

“Here!” Annja shouted.

The bright beam stung her eyes. She turned her head away. She sat on a branch eight feet above the water. The level didn’t appear to be rising.

“They said you were underwater,” Lochata shouted from the nearby tree.

“Not anymore.” Judging herself to be at a safe height, Annja shrugged out of her backpack and checked it. It was constructed so the main cargo area, where she carried her notebook computer, her camera and her other electronic equipment, was waterproof. She’d carefully packed it when the storm approached. The only worry was that debris might have smashed it.

Everything felt all right. She didn’t want to open the backpack in the rain to find out. After selecting a sturdy branch above her, she used the straps to secure the backpack. She took a flashlight from one of the outside pockets.

For the moment, no sign remained of the cliff as the water continued to surge through the jungle and inland.

That’s got to be at least fifteen feet deep, Annja thought. She tried to remember how high the lowest tree branches had been from the ground. Then she realized she didn’t know where the lowest branches were anymore.

“How long is this going to last?” someone above her asked.

Annja looked and saw Jason Kim sitting a few branches up. He clung to the tree bole. A young German woman had her arms wrapped around his waist. Both of them looked terrified.

“I don’t know,” Annja said. “Could be only a few minutes. Might possibly be hours.”

“Is it over?” the young woman asked.

Annja was hesitant to answer. “I think so.” Given the amount of water that had flooded the land, she knew that whatever had happened at sea to cause it had to have been powerful.

The massive tree swayed under the constant bombardment of the waves. They were lessening, but still dangerous.

Lightning burned through the night and revealed the dark clouds swirling and twisting overhead. The harsh peal of thunder came immediately.

Another crack, this one different from the thunder, issued from the left. A chorus of yells and cries for help followed.

Turning in the direction of the voices, Annja spotted a teak tree as it fell into the water. Three dig members clung to the branches as it went down. Annja guessed that the tree had been poorly rooted or had rotted and weakened. Either way, the surging sea started to carry the tree away.

“They’re going to get killed,” Jason Kim said.

Other people voiced the same concerns.

Annja knew that death was a possibility. If they stayed with the tree, if they didn’t get smashed by the branches, they might survive. But the water might carry them a mile or more into the interior, just far enough for them to get lost and possibly die from some other cause.

She grabbed her rope and shimmied along the thick branch she was on. Just as the branch started to sag beneath her weight, she jumped forward for the next tree. The teaks overcrowded the area and the branches grew close together.

By the time she caught a thick branch in front of her, she’d already chosen her next landing point. Like an aerial gymnast working uneven bars, she made her way through the trees faster than the floodwaters could carry away the huge tree. She also got closer to the water level. Her hands burned from friction against the bark.

After her fifth jump, when she knew she was out of trees, Annja shrugged the rope from her shoulder. Setting herself on a limb as wide as her body, she shook out the rope, swung the grappling hook and cast.

The grappling hook landed in the branches of the fallen tree. It jerked and bounced as it slid along the length of the tree without securing a hold.

C’mon, Annja thought. Take hold somewhere.

The grappling hook snugged up against a thick branch. Annja yanked on it like fishing line to set it. Satisfied it was securely in place and knowing that she’d never be able to hold the tree on her own, she dropped over the back of the branch she was on and paid out rope as she plunged into the water.

For a moment as she entered the water, she was afraid. The drop was little more than six feet, but she knew anything could be under the water. If she was knocked unconscious or seriously injured, no one would be able to help her.

The flashlight beams of the other dig site members played over the water as they tracked the tree caught in the surge. The glowing light continued moving away from Annja.

When the rope bit into her hand, Annja paid out more line and fought the current to get to the base of the tree she’d dropped from. Once she had hold of the tree, she pulled herself around it and looped the rope. Then it, too, became a deadly threat.

If she got caught in the rope, if the weight didn’t amputate her fingers or a hand or break them, it might trap her below the water and leave her to drown. The coarse fiber burned along her palm.

The rope pulled taut. The tree she’d attached it to shivered under the assault. But it held.

Working quickly, Annja tied the rope off and made it secure. She had to work one-handed while she held on to the tree with the other. Then, as black spots danced in her vision from lack of oxygen, she kicked and swam up next to the tree.

The flashlight beams from the other dig site members barely reached the fallen tree. In the dim light, Annja saw that all three people still held on to the branches less than thirty feet away from her.

Annja abandoned her hold and let the current take her. The current wasn’t as strong as it had been earlier. Swimming in it was difficult but it was only a short distance.

When she reached the tree, she hung on for a moment to gather her strength. Instead, the constant battle with the current only leeched energy from her. She forced her body out of the water and onto the tree.

“Is everyone all right?” Annja shouted above the noise of the storm and the rushing water.

All three college students, two female and one male, nodded. All of them looked pale and frightened in the flashlight beams and the lightning.

Tethered at the end of the rope, the tree danced and jerked like a fish on a line. Annja spotted the white scars left in the bark by the grappling hook’s prongs. She could see the branch the hook had caught had started to tear away.

Annja made her way across the slippery tree trunk and grabbed the branches from another nearby tree. She held tight and saw blood from the cuts on her hands. She ignored the pain and kept gripping.

“Get into the tree,” Annja ordered the others.

At first none of the three college students wanted to move. All of them were from Lochata’s university, and they all spoke English.

“Now!” Annja commanded in a more forceful tone. “That branch is going to tear free. I don’t have another rope and I don’t think we’ll get this lucky twice.”

One of the women spoke to the others in her native language. She got them up and moving. Awkwardly and fearfully, they made their way into the other tree.

Annja helped them, then pulled herself into the branches. She felt the cold from the storm splintering through her body.

Postadrenal surge, she told herself as she hunkered down and rubbed her arms. You’ll sleep well tonight. If you find a place to sleep.

The storm continued unabated. A few minutes later, the broken tree tore free from the rope and floated away. It collided with several other trees before disappearing into the darkness.

Annja settled in and got as comfortable as she could. It promised to be a long night.



A NNJA WOKE with the dawn. The sun painted the eastern horizon pink and purple with hints of gold and ruby. Blinking against the brightness, Annja relished the increasing warmth. When she pushed herself up from the crook of the tree’s branches where she’d slept, the pain in her hands reminded her of the damage she’d done.

She looked down at them and found several tears and scrapes across her palms. They weren’t as bad as they’d felt last night, but they were still painful when she flexed them.

“Professor Creed, I can’t believe you slept like that.”

Annja glanced up and shaded her eyes against the sun. One of the Indian college students sat on a limb above her. She was young and thin with long black hair. Annja tried to remember her name and finally got it.

“Indira, right?” Annja asked.

The young woman nodded. “I couldn’t sleep a wink.”

“I probably shouldn’t have.” Annja looked down. The water level had dropped considerably, but it still looked several feet deep. There was no sign of the campsite or the vehicles.

“I left my computer down there,” Indira said. “All my stuff.” She bit her lower lip. “It’s probably ruined, isn’t it?”

Annja hated giving the young woman the bad news. “I’m afraid so.”

Tears filled Indira’s eyes.

A guilty feeling stole through Annja even though she’d had nothing to do with the tsunami. She looked back at the tree she’d originally climbed. Her backpack still hung safely from the limb. She sighed in relief. Replacing the equipment would have been a pain, but financially she could have done it. However, getting replacements could have been difficult.

She grabbed the limb over her head and pulled up. Her hand burned as the cuts pulled. A quick inspection revealed that none of them had broken open. Infection could be a problem, she told herself. And the first things you take care of when you’re out in the tropics are your hands and feet.

She discovered she was sore from sleeping in the tree. All the diving, jumping and swimming had probably contributed to it, she thought.

“Professor Creed?”

Still not used to the formality, Annja thought. She wasn’t actually a professor but Lochata Rai had told all of her charges they were to address Annja that way.

The speaker was the male college student. Annja felt bad that she couldn’t remember his name at all.

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to thank you for saving us,” he said. “That was the coolest thing I think I’ve ever seen done.”



“W E WERE VERY LUCKY ,” Lochata said. “Everyone survived the experience.”

“I know. But the flood destroyed the dig site.” Annja waded through the hip-deep water and felt the pull of the flood’s withdrawal. The sea continued to return to its proper boundaries.

Annja and the professor had organized the dig members into teams responsible for searching for supplies that might have survived the flooding. Prizes turned up with hopeful regularity, though many of them were farther inland. A lot of the food and water was in waterproof containers. Unfortunately, many of those containers were buoyant. The deluge had ripped the tents free of their stakes and allowed them to be carried inland or back out to sea.

“What was buried under the earth will still be there when we are ready to begin again,” Lochata said. She reached forward and plucked a snake from the water, examined it for a moment, then hung it on a tree limb.

“Think it’ll find its way home again?” Annja asked.

“Or make a new home, perhaps.” Lochata watched the snake slither along the branch until it found a place in the sun. It coiled up and sat there.

One of the male students sang out joyously fifteen yards away. He hoisted a bottled sports drink into the air as if he’d just won an Olympic event. He spoke in his own language.

“He says he’s found a whole box of the sports drink,” Lochata translated with a smile. “At least forty-eight bottles.”

The find drew the others to the area and they fanned out to search the underbrush for more food and drink.

Annja knew they weren’t going to starve. Her satellite phone had allowed Lochata to get in touch with rescue centers in Kanyakumari and request assistance.

According to the dispatch officer Lochata had conversed with, the city hadn’t been hit by the tsunami. The disaster seemed to be fairly localized, but several small villages had been hard-hit, as well.

“Are you going to continue the dig?” Annja asked.

“If I’m able. I still have to contact the university.”

“It seems a shame to walk away from it now. We’ve just gotten started,” Annja said.

“I agree.”

“And it’s not likely there’ll be another tsunami.”

“I don’t think so, either.”

Annja watched the university students splash around in the water. “Do you think many of your interns will stay on?”

“I can only ask.” Lochata raised her thin shoulders and dropped them. “For many of them, this will be a grand adventure by tomorrow. Something they’ll be able to brag about to their classmates when we return to university. However, they have to return in two weeks no matter what. That’s all I could arrange for them to be away from their studies. I was not able to schedule this for the summer due to the monsoon season.”

“You can always threaten them with their grades.” Annja smiled.

“Hey!” someone shouted. “I found gold!”

The unusual cry drew Annja’s attention at once. Across the water, brown and thick with dirt and debris, one of the male college students held up an object that held the dark yellow luster of gold. He had to use both hands to hold the object.

Lochata and Annja trudged through the water and joined him.

“Let me see that.” Lochata took glasses from her vest pocket, slipped them on, then reached for the object the young man held.

Annja peered over the diminutive professor’s shoulder for a better look.

The object was hardly larger than Annja’s closed fist, but it was too heavy to be common metal. It looked like an egg, elliptical in shape. But at the top a fist poked through.

“What is it?” someone asked.

“It appears to be a mechanism of some sort,” Lochata answered.

“Is it gold?” someone else asked.

“I believe so, yes.” Lochata’s fingers glided around the figure.

“Where did you find it?” Annja asked the student who’d found it.

He pointed at the calf-deep water. “Here. I stubbed my toe against it. I figured it was just a rock, but when I looked down I saw that gold color. When I picked it up, that’s what I found.”

Several of the students took renewed interest in the surrounding area.

“Am I going to get to keep it?” the student asked.

“Dude,” Jason said, “if I can’t keep one lousy skull out of the dozens we found, there’s no way they’re going to let you keep a solid-gold paperweight.”

“It’s not a paperweight,” Annja said.

“Then what is it?”

“No one makes a paperweight out of solid gold,” one of the female students said. “Except maybe Paris Hilton or Britney Spears.”

Annja ignored the chatter. She watched as Lochata’s fingers found the hidden release. The mechanism inside the egg-shape whirred to life. The device split open like the sections of an orange to reveal the figurine inside.

It was a woman.

At least, part of it was a woman. From the waist up, the fantastic creature was a woman. She held one fist above her head. In the other she held a short whip.

But below the waist she was a snake. Her serpentine half sat in a tight coil and balanced her.




4


“A ship! I see a ship!”

Wearily, Goraksh Shivaji lifted his head and stared out at the bleak expanse of the Indian Ocean from the deck of his father’s ship, the Black Swan. He’d barely managed a handful of catnaps during the night.

He should have been home in Kanyakumari studying algorithmic design paradigms. The professor this semester was harsh. College life wasn’t easy for him. It didn’t help that his father expected him to work a fifty-hour week in the warehouse.

Over the past two years of his career at university, Goraksh had thought about telling his father that he was quitting the warehouse. But he needed the pittance his father paid him to pay his tuition.

Jobs were hard to come by, especially ones that worked around a college schedule. Also, working in the warehouse guaranteed that he could live in his father’s house. If he was on his own, he knew he wouldn’t be able to make ends meet.

As it was, when Goraksh finally graduated, he was going to owe a small fortune to the university. He would have his degree in computer science. Then he would be able to get a good job in the United States, maybe designing video games, and finally leave his father’s warehouse behind for good.

But that was the dream. Tonight was all about working for his father. If you could call piracy work, Goraksh grumbled sourly.

“Goraksh, do you see the ship?” His father’s voice was stern. Rajiv Shivaji was a hard, lean man in his early fifties. He wore the turban and steel bracelet—the kara —of the Sikh, and his beard was full. He also carried a .357 Magnum revolver in a shoulder holster.

“Not yet, Father,” Goraksh replied. He held the high-powered binoculars to his eyes and swept the surface of the sea. The light hurt his eyes. He swayed to the rise and fall of the waves as the cargo ship strained under full sail.

Rajiv stood at the prow of the ship and held on to the railing. Goraksh had never seen a man more able who had taken to sea. It was easy to imagine him sailing with the likes of Sinbad the Sailor and other heroes.

Except that Rajiv wasn’t a hero. He was a pirate and a thief, and he had set sail with his crew after learning the tsunami had struck. They’d expected to find several ships swamped at sea. So far they’d found none.

“Fyzee,” Rajiv yelled up to the old man standing in the wire crow’s nest twenty feet above the pitching deck.

“Yes, Captain.”

“Do you still see the ship?”

“I do. It’s only a short distance away.” Fyzee pointed. He was old and potbellied. His beard and hair had turned snow-white long ago.

Goraksh followed the direction the old man was pointing, then lifted the binoculars to his eyes again. This time he saw the ship. He knew then why he’d lost it—the ship was upside down.

Judging from the rough, unadorned exterior and the barnacle-covered hull, the craft was a cargo ship. It was one of the lunkers that local businesses used to cross the Indian Ocean on regular routes. They were operated for a song and only required a skeleton crew. Goraksh thought of the ship’s crew and wondered what had happened to them.

Sickness lurched through Goraksh’s stomach when he thought of how cruel the sea could be to those who were lost in it. He’d been with his father when they’d reclaimed bodies from the ocean. Sometimes, after the sharks had gotten at them, there were only parts of bodies. But they’d inspected them for anything worth stealing and quickly shoved the gruesome remains back into the sea.

“Well?” his father demanded.

“I see it,” Goraksh replied.

“Where is it?”

“South by southwest.”

Rajiv called orders back to the helmsmen. The crew came about sharply as the ship took on a new heading.

“Are there any survivors?” Rajiv asked.

“None that I can see.” Goraksh kept scanning the boat from prow to stern. He knew they weren’t looking for survivors. Anyone who had lived through the storm would only complicate things.

Rajiv gave orders to trim the sails. Goraksh put his binoculars back in their protective case. Tension knotted in his stomach when he thought of what might lie in the overturned ship’s hold.



G ORAKSH BRACED HIMSELF as the ship came alongside the cargo vessel expertly. Tires tied along the length of their port side muffled the impact.

“All right,” his father growled as he paced the ship’s deck, “get aboard and discover what the gods have favored us with on this trip.” He stopped in front of Goraksh. “Go with them, college boy. See how a man dirties his hands to put food on the table.”

Goraksh wanted to argue but he couldn’t meet his father’s gaze. His father had been angry with him ever since Professor Harbhajan stopped by the warehouse early in the week.

The warehouse had been full of stolen and illegally salvaged items. Fortunately the professor hadn’t recognized any of it. But Goraksh’s father hadn’t let him forget that the professor could just as easily have turned them in to the police.

Professor Harbhajan had graded the projects his class had turned in at the start of the semester. He’d stated that he’d been particularly impressed by Goraksh’s work. His father had been incensed when he’d heard about the visit and the topic.

Rajiv was one to hold grudges for years. Goraksh knew that no matter how long he lived he would never be forgiven the trespass he himself had not caused.

Without a word, Goraksh nodded. He kicked off his shoes and clambered over the ship’s side with the rest of the boarding crew.



U NDER THE HOT SUN , Goraksh held the battery-operated saw and worked quickly. He’d paired up with Karam, one of his father’s oldest crew. The man was emaciated by age and alcoholism. His gray beard showed stark against his dark skin. Old scars inscribed leathery worms against his features.

The saw jumped and jerked in Goraksh’s hands as he held it to the task. The blade chewed through the wooden hull and threw out a constant spray of splinters. He remained aware throughout of the ship’s erratic movement in the water.

Finally, when he had a square cut that measured a yard to a side, Goraksh pulled the saw back and stomped his foot on the square. The section dropped down into the hold. Goraksh heard it hit water only a short distance down.

“There’s water in the hold,” Karam called across to the other ship.

Rajiv leaned on the railing. “Find out what else is down there.”

Karam nodded.

“Goraksh,” Rajiv called. “You’ll go inside.”

For a moment Goraksh thought of disobeying his father’s order. His father knew he had a fear of enclosed, dark places.

“She’s the Bombay Goose, ” Rajiv said. “I checked her manifest.”

Goraksh knew his father paid someone off in the customs house for ships’ manifests.

“She’s carrying electronics,” his father continued. “Computers, DVD players. Those will sell nicely on the black market.”

They’re probably all destroyed, Goraksh thought. But he knew better than to point that out to his father. Rajiv Shivaji always believed good things would happen to him.

Rajiv looked over his shoulder and shouted for the scuba gear to be brought up from the hold.

Karam caught Goraksh’s eye and spoke in a low voice. “Go slowly, boy. Everything will be all right if you just go slowly.”

Goraksh nodded but he didn’t believe it. He didn’t think for a moment that the crew had gotten off the ship in time. He only hoped that they’d all been lost to the sea.



W ITH THE AQUALUNG STRAPPED to his back and an underwater floodlight in one hand, Goraksh dropped into the ship’s hold through the hole he’d cut. He was in total blackness except for what little light entered the hold through the cut-away hole.

He stayed submerged for a moment and blew into his face mask to equalize the pressure. Then he shone the floodlight around the hold. Boxes lay on what had been the hold’s ceiling or floated in the water. The air pocket between the hull and the waterline was less than three feet deep.

Goraksh didn’t know what was keeping the cargo ship afloat. Thinking like that made him nervous, though. If the ship suddenly went down, the sea bottom was nearly a half mile down. If he didn’t get out quickly enough, it would take him with it.

Don’t think about that, he instructed himself. Get the job done.

He surfaced and shone the floodlight up at Karam. “Send down the net.”

Karam nodded and dropped the cargo net down. Other members of the crew used battery-operated saws to widen the hole in the hull.

Goraksh grabbed a fistful of the rough hemp strands and pulled the net under with him. He selected a crate at random and wrapped the net over it. Then he yanked on the rope to signal Karam and the others to haul it out of the hold.

An arm settled around Goraksh’s neck and shoulder. Fear ripped through him as he flailed in the water with his free hand to turn around. He aimed the floodlight behind him and instinctively centered it on the figure.

The dead man’s mouth and eyes were open. Yellowed eyes and yellow, crooked teeth showed.

That was all Goraksh noticed before he screamed in terror and tried to swim backward. The respirator dropped from his lips and his face slammed into a suspended crate hard enough to almost knock him out. He swallowed seawater as he tried to breathe, then remembered he was underwater.

Fighting the panic that filled him, unable to get the dead man’s face out of his mind, Goraksh dropped the floodlight and used both hands to shove crates away from him so he could reach the surface. He pushed off on a floating crate and got enough lift to reach the edge of the hole that had been cut in the hold.

Sick, barely able to breathe because of his fear of dead things and the seawater he’d swallowed, Goraksh hauled himself out of the hold. He couldn’t stand and ended up on all fours as he retched out the seawater.

When his stomach finally settled, Goraksh felt drained and embarrassed. He forced himself to his feet and stood on shaky legs amid the mess he’d made.

“Are you through shaming me?” his father roared from the other ship.

Goraksh faced his father and intended to speak roughly, as a man would do. But his words were soft and without direction.

“The crew went down with the ship,” he said.

“Good. Then maybe they didn’t have time to call in this location,” his father said. “Maybe we’ll have more time to work.”

Even after all the years he’d lived with the man, Goraksh couldn’t believe how callous he was. Rajiv had brought Goraksh along on the pirating expeditions after storms for eight of his twenty years. During the past four, Goraksh had been expected to take part in stealing whatever cargo they could salvage.

Finding the illegal salvage was one thing, but getting away with it was quite another. The Indian navy and merchant marine, the British navy and the International Maritime Bureau, were all problems. Rajiv Shivaji considered those risks a part of doing business.

Goraksh recognized them as an end to the life he wanted. His father was a pirate. Rajiv Shivaji carried on an old family enterprise. Goraksh never romanticized the nature of what his father did.

But if Goraksh was ever caught doing his father’s business, he knew his dream future was forfeit. Still, he loved his father. After his mother had died, his father had raised him and had never taken another wife. It had only been the two of them.

If Goraksh was ever to be asked if he feared or loved his father more, though, Goraksh didn’t know what his answer would be.



K ARAM USED a crowbar to open the crate Goraksh had selected from those in the flooded hold. Water, foam peanuts and boxes of iPods spilled out across the ship’s hull.

“They’re ruined,” Rajiv snarled. “Go below and find something salvageable.”

Goraksh put the respirator back in his mouth and dived back into the hold. He recovered his floodlight and tried not to look at the dead man floating amid the boxes. Then he found two more.

He bagged more crates and sent them up. During the time he waited for the net to be sent back down, he scouted the hold. Two hatches, one at either end, normally allowed access to the upper decks. Both of them had jammed.

If there was anything in the crew’s quarters, they wouldn’t be able to get to it without cutting through the floor or forcing the hatches. Goraksh hoped his father wouldn’t demand that. Doing either of those things might upset the equilibrium of the ship.

Even now he truly believed the ship had sunk lower in the water. He reached the opening they’d created more easily.

Pounding echoed throughout the hold. Goraksh felt as though he were trapped in a gigantic drum. He netted a final crate, thinking his efforts were going to be as wasted as the other times. He surfaced.

Karam leaned down into the hold. He cupped one hand around his mouth to be heard over the sound of the sea against the hull. “Your father wants to leave.”

“All right,” Goraksh responded. He swam through the maze of boxes to the opening and wondered what had made his father change his mind. Not even the fact that they’d only pulled up ruined electronics in over a dozen attempts would have made Rajiv Shivaji give up on the hope of turning a profit.

Something had happened.



“I S ANYONE OUT THERE ? Can anyone help us?”

Goraksh stood beside his father in the ship’s wheelhouse and listened to the broadcast over the shortwave radio. His sodden clothing gave him a chill.

“Hello? Hello? God, please let someone be out there. We need help. Our boat is sinking. Please. Please! ”

The voice belonged to a woman. She sounded young and frightened.

Rajiv glanced at the radio operator. The man worked quickly with a slide rule, compass and map. He made a few tentative marks and watched his instruments again.

“Why don’t you answer her?” Goraksh asked. For a moment he couldn’t help imagining his girlfriend at the other end of the radio connection. Then again, Tejashree feared the open ocean and wouldn’t accompany him sailing.

“Because I don’t wish to answer her,” Rajiv said.

Goraksh fell silent and knew better than to ask again.

“Our boat is the Grimjoy, ” the woman said.

Although he tried, Goraksh couldn’t decide if her accent was American or Canadian. He knew there was a difference between the two, but he didn’t quite know how to tell. He would have known if she had a British inflection.

“ Grimjoy, ” one of his father’s men said as if he were familiar with the vessel.

“I know.” Rajiv nodded happily. “I know that boat.” He looked at the radio operator. “Can you locate it?”

The man made a few final notations on the map. “I have it now.” He handed up a slip of paper with the coordinates listed.

“How far away are we?” Rajiv demanded.

“Ten or fifteen miles. They’re north of our position.”

“Is the boat in the open sea?”

The radio operator shook his head.

Goraksh knew that within the country’s boundaries the authorities would arrest his father for what he was doing. Most of the men on the Black Swan had been in trouble with the law on some occasion.

“Does anyone else know they’re out there?” Rajiv asked.

“I’ve been monitoring this frequency. So far they’ve received no reply.”

“Good.” Rajiv gave the paper with the coordinates to the helmsman. “Set a course to take us there immediately.”

The man nodded and hurried away.

Rajiv strode out of the wheelhouse and onto the deck. He bellowed orders to abandon the sinking cargo ship and put on sails.

Goraksh watched his father, but he listened to the woman’s plaintive voice coming over the radio frequency.

“Please. Someone has to be out there. We’re adrift. I don’t know how to work the boat.”

In seconds the Black Swan got under way. She heeled hard to port, caught the wind and sliced through the rolling waves like a thoroughbred.

When he joined his father on the deck and saw the savage exuberance on his father’s face, the sick knot inside Goraksh’s stomach twisted more violently. He’d never seen his father kill anyone, but he was aware of the stories that were told in the rough bars and opium dens in the darkest corners of Kanyakumari that said Rajiv Shivaji was a murderer several times over.




5


“Dude, nagas were evil.”

“Maybe in Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition, but not in Three-Point-Five. In Three-Point-Five you could roll up a naga character and play one. You could be Lawful Good if you wanted to.”

“Yeah, well Three-Point-Five ripped D&D’s canon all to hell. It was just a stupid marketing ploy to bring back players who wanted to play monster characters and got pissed because they couldn’t.”

“Playing monster characters is cool.”

The constant chatter had finally gotten on Annja’s last nerve as she scanned the ocean shallows for more artifacts like the naga. She’d been listening to the arguments cycle viciously between Jason and one of Professor Rai’s students for two hours. At first the discussions had been amusing. Now they were exhausting.

“Hey!” Annja turned around quickly and brought both of the younger men up short. They splashed to awkward stops in the water. “Gamer geeks—enough with the chatter.”

Jason and the other young man just looked at her owlishly. They even blinked at about the same time.

“The naga statue we found isn’t a playing piece from some long-lost D&D game,” Annja said. “We’re supposed to be out here looking for more artifacts.”

She and Lochata had agreed to keep the students busy until the rescue helicopter arrived. They’d salvaged enough water and energy drinks to get them through the next few hours.

“You think that naga was like part of a chess set?” the other young man asked.

Irritated, Annja pinned him with her gaze. “What’s your name?”

“Me?” The young man pointed at himself and looked surprised.

“Yes. You.”

He shrugged. “My name is Sansar.”

“Fine. Listen up. No, I do not think that naga statue was part of a chess set. Or any kind of game.”

“It would be kind of big, I suppose.”

“Sansar,” Annja said, struggling to maintain her composure.

The young man looked at her.

“What I think is that the naga statue came from somewhere out there.” Annja waved at the shallows that lapped at the foot of the cliff. The flooding had almost totally receded.

“Like, it was just laying out here somewhere?”

“Or was buried under the sand.” Sand, shells and other debris from the sea lay strewed across the dig site and into the jungle. “The tsunami moved a lot of sea floor. Maybe it shifted some things around,” Annja said.

“You think there’s more out here?”

“I think there could be more out here,” Annja corrected. She couldn’t believe how lackadaisical the two were about potentially finding more artifacts.

“So we could be out here tromping around in the water for no reason,” Jason said.

“Personally, I think it beats sitting around the dig site in muddy clothes waiting for help to arrive,” Annja said.

Jason frowned. “If my PSP hadn’t gotten washed away, I’d rather be sitting in the shade playing a game.”

Okay, Annja thought with a sigh, forensic anthropology in a nice, quiet lab is soooo going to be your thing.

“When’s the rescue helicopter going to be here?” Sansar asked.

“I don’t know,” Annja answered. She felt a headache coming on, but she didn’t know if it was caused by hunger, the hot sun, spending the night in a tree or listening to the never-ending argument.

“Man, I hope somebody finds more food,” Sansar said. “Do you think a Pringles can could survive getting submerged? I mean, if it hasn’t been opened. Those things are watertight before you peel them open.”

Annja turned to face the two. “I’ve got an idea.”

They waited.

“Why don’t you two walk in that direction?” Annja pointed in the opposite direction.

Jason looked that way, then he looked back at Annja. “Why do we have to walk that way? Why can’t we walk with you?”

“Because we can cover more ground if we separate.” Annja hoped she sounded reasonable instead of frustrated and resentful of the company she was keeping.

“Yeah,” Jason said, “I can see that. But why do you have to have this end? Why can’t we have it?”

Annja stared at Jason. “We’ve been through a tsunami. We’re trapped out here without supplies. And you want to argue over which end of the Indian Ocean we’re going to search for artifacts that could be harder to find than a needle in a haystack?”

Jason’s self-preservation suddenly kicked in. He held his hands up before him. “Hey, you know what? This end is just fine with me.” He looked over his shoulder and faked smiling happily.

“What if she’s telling us to go that way because she believes she’s going to find something this way?” Sansar said suspiciously. “How do you know she doesn’t just want all the glory for herself?”

“Dude,” Jason whispered, “you should really keep your mouth shut about now. She could kick your butt.”

“Okay,” Annja said as evenly as she could, which she knew wasn’t very even at all, “you guys take this end. I’ll take that one.” She pulled the straps on her backpack and headed the other way.

“You just really made her mad,” Jason told his companion.

“Me? You’re the one that started the argument over the D&D rules.”

Annja tried to block them from her hearing, but she was doomed to failure because sound carried more clearly and farther over water than it did over land. There were times when she preferred working alone on a dig. This was one of them.

Doing a field study with Professor Rai was a treat. The woman had traveled extensively around the Indian subcontinent and been part of every major dig the Archaeological Survey of India had done in the past twenty years. Annja knew she could learn a lot. She also knew that the professor had played up Annja’s involvement to the local papers to get more press due to the Chasing History’s Monsters connection.

The Shakti-sacrificial-victims dig hadn’t been set up to ferret out any new information. It was fieldwork designed to season the professor’s class and to provide more substantiation to the book Lochata was writing on Shakti.

The gold naga statue was a totally unexpected find. Annja just hoped there would be more. She didn’t see how there couldn’t be.

Jason and Sansar kept up their argument, though at a lower volume. They obviously weren’t paying attention to what might be in the shallows.

Annja sighed unhappily. She was wet, hungry, tired and pushed to the breaking point of her patience. She wondered how the two students could be so completely useless. She wanted to find another artifact to show them what could happen if they actually applied themselves to the task at hand.

“Hey!” Jason yelled with sudden enthusiasm. “Look what I found!”



“S O HOW OLD IS IT ?” Jason wanted to know.

Standing in the shallows where the artifact had been found, Annja upended the fired clay pot and studied the bottom. “49 B.C. ,” she said

“Wow,” Sansar said. “That thing’s over 2050 years old.”

Jason slapped him on the back of the head. “She’s goofing you. How would a potter know that he made a pot forty-nine years before Christ was born?”

“Oh.” Sansar rubbed his head. “I knew that. I was just so excited over finding it that I wasn’t thinking.”

“You didn’t find it. I did,” Jason said.

“We were walking together. That means we both found it.”

“I seem to recall bending down to pick it up from the water,” Jason replied.

“Both of you can shut up,” Annja suggested.

They looked at her, clearly offended but silent nonetheless.

“I think you have found something,” Annja said a short time later. “It even ties in with the dig Professor Rai has initiated.” She pointed to the figure of a six-armed woman riding a tiger.

“Shakti, right?” Jason asked.

“Right.”

“I thought I recognized her.”

“This lays out some of her story.” Annja slowly turned the pot to display the collection of images around the base.

The images were sculpted to lead one into the other. The image next to the one of Shakti on the tiger showed her at court with several ladies-in-waiting fanning her. Still another showed her in battle with Shiva, her lover. The final image showed her sacrificing herself on a funeral pyre to Shiva.

“Makes you wonder how long the Shakti cult was here,” Jason said.

“It does,” Annja admitted. “But it also makes you wonder how wide the belief in her was spread.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did this come from the dig site? Or was it brought in from the sea?”

“You think someone threw it away?”

“No.” Annja struggled for patience. “I think the naga and the pot could have been part of a ship’s cargo.”

“Cool,” Sansar said. “You mean you think there’s a sunken treasure ship loaded with gold out there?”

“No,” Annja said. “I don’t.”



B UT THE OTHER MEMBERS of the dig site were quickly convinced by Sansar and Jason that the ocean shallows were burgeoning with gold just waiting to be scooped up. They’d taken a break to go get bottles of water and quickly spread the news of their find. When they’d returned, most of the dig site members had returned with them.

The students split into groups and prowled the water like children on an Easter-egg hunt. Jason and Sansar had stopped arguing long enough to locate a fishing net that had washed up. They weighted the bottom with stones and were dragging the ocean bed.

Annja reluctantly admitted to herself that the two were definitely inventive.

“Not exactly the most organized effort, is it?” Lochata asked.

“Not even,” Annja agreed. Her headache had gotten worse. Despite the pain and the frustration she felt, she worked in the journal she was keeping for the Shakti dig.

She sketched the bay area’s general geographical characteristics and marked the site where the clay pot had been found. The spot where the naga statue had been found had already been marked.

“I’m surprised the pot survived the tsunami,” Lochata said.

“Not to mention hundreds or thousands of years at the bottom of the ocean,” Annja said.

“It wasn’t there thousands.” Lochata turned the pot carefully in her hands. “This was kiln-fired.”

“So it came from a city or a town,” Annja said.

Lochata nodded.

Annja flipped back through the notes she’d made prior to boarding the plane in New York. “The closest city I know of that was on the coast within that time frame was Kaveripattinam.”

“There were a few others. Smaller, but still viable. But it was Kaveripattinam that the world came to see and trade with. Until a tsunami destroyed much of it twenty-five hundred years ago,” Lochata said.

“We’re a long way from Poompuhar,” Annja pointed out. Kaveripattinam had been rebuilt over time, though so much of the ancient architecture had been lost, and it had been renamed Poompuhar.

“The pot could have come from a merchant ship, then,” Lochata said. “I’ve worked with a lot of the pottery that was found offshore there. This piece looks like other pieces that were recovered there.”

“Even the bas-relief?”

“No. I was talking about the composition of the materials and the technique used to fire it.” Lochata ran her fingers over the raised images of Shakti. “These mark the pot as something other than an everyday pot. This was probably intended for a religious service. Or as a cherished gift for a lover or a family member.”

Annja showed the professor her drawing. “The pot and the statue were found in a relatively straight line.”

Lochata nodded. “I’d noticed that.”

“It would probably help if some of the students searched deeper into the jungle. Anything that was light would have washed farther up the shore.”

“When I can get them to stop looking for gold,” Lochata said, “I intend to have them search there.” She sighed. “Provided they’re interested in continuing the dig.”

Annja glanced out at the students walking through the shallows and smiled. “I think they’re interested. We just need to find a few more things to keep them that way.”



W HEN A NNJA STRIPPED DOWN to her bikini she claimed the instant attention of every male in the dig crew. She felt a little self-conscious as she walked toward the water.

She had a good body. She knew that. Hours of work on the weight machines and StairMaster, hours spent in the boxing gym she frequented and an active lifestyle guaranteed that.

And the bikini showed off her figure. She’d worn it under her clothes so she could go for a quiet, private swim in the ocean at the end of a long hot day in the pit.

The snorkel and swim fins she carried were borrowed from one of the students whose belongings had turned up in a tree. At the water’s edge, she sat on a rock, pulled the swim fins on and settled the mask over her face. She tried to ignore the continued staring as she made her way out into the water.

She swam out twenty yards or so. From the way the seabed gradually sloped out, she guessed she was in fifteen to twenty feet of water. After a final deep breath to charge her lungs, she dived.

The crash of the surf against the cliff suddenly seemed distant. Annja felt as if she’d been wrapped in cotton. She swam cleanly as she moved her arms and legs almost effortlessly.

The ocean was clearer than she’d expected. With the disturbance caused by the tsunami she’d anticipated a lot of debris in the water. There was a lingering fog, however, that limited her visibility. She resisted the impulse to clean her face mask.

As always, the beauty of the sea overcame her. The brilliant colors of the fish in the tropical saltwater environment caught her eye again and again. Schools swam and darted in unison. Several coral growths stood proudly on the sea bottom. An eel whipsawed through less than a dozen feet away.

You’re not here on a sight-seeing tour, Annja reminded herself. She swam down to within reaching distance of the seabed.

She hadn’t swum far when she found the first gold coin. She dug it out of the loose sand and spotted three more.

In the excitement, she hadn’t paid particular attention to the tightness that strained her lungs.

When she flipped over to begin her ascent, she noticed the hull of a speedboat cutting through the water toward the shallows. She surfaced and spit out the snorkel mouthpiece, breathing deeply to replenish her depleted lungs.

The boat moved in too close and too quick. Several students had to flee the water. Four men sat in the speedboat. They laughed at the students and mimed the panicked reactions of some of them.

Annja treaded water on the other side of the speedboat. She scanned the craft and noticed the name and registration were missing or covered over.

Things didn’t look good.

One of the men brought up a bolt-action rifle and shouted something in his native tongue. Another man tapped him on the shoulder and spoke quickly.

The man with the rifle addressed the dig members again in English. “I want to talk to your boss now or I will start shooting.”




6


The Grimjoy rocked on the sea with a careless abandon that told Goraksh the craft hadn’t been properly anchored.

The yacht was a thing of beauty. At least forty feet long, the boat was a shipbuilder’s confection of polished teak and brass. It was also rigged and powered to be a motorsailer, capable of traveling with the wind or by the big engines.

Goraksh listened to his father’s bellowed commands and helped with the sails as the Black Swan closed on the yacht. The lookout in the crow’s nest relayed that no one else appeared to be about.

Grabbing his binoculars, Goraksh studied the yacht. He spotted a red-haired woman in a bikini waving frantically in the stern, but no one else appeared on deck.

“What do you think?”

His father’s unannounced presence at his side startled Goraksh. He took an involuntary step away before realizing it was his father.

“What do I think about what, Father?” Goraksh asked.

Rajiv nodded at the yacht. “It could be a trap.”

“A trap?”

“There could be armed men belowdecks waiting till we’re within range,” Rajiv said as calmly as though they were discussing the prevailing winds. “They could have rifles or machine guns. Perhaps even a rocket launcher. Those things are not as hard to get hold of as they once were.”

Goraksh knew that; his father sometimes dealt in munitions. But everyone who had a boat and needed money did. There were always rebel forces in India, Africa and the Middle East who needed them. Sometimes Rajiv only hired out to transport someone else’s weapons.

The woman continued waving and yelling.

“I don’t think it’s a trap,” Goraksh replied. “The woman appears too afraid.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” his father said. “It pays to be right.” He paused. “But it also pays to be careful.” He barked an order to one of the men.

Instantly the order was relayed to the other men. All of them armed themselves with assault rifles that were brought up from belowdecks. Possession of any one of the weapons was enough to get them in serious trouble. Having all of them—

Goraksh swallowed hard. He didn’t know what having all of them meant. But it couldn’t be good.

The woman didn’t think so, either. She shrank back, then turned and fled into the cabin.

“Here.”

Goraksh turned once more to his father. Rajiv held a semiautomatic pistol in his hand.

“Take this in case you need it,” his father commanded.

Reluctantly, but trying hard not to show it, Goraksh took the pistol. The weapon fit his hand instinctively, but it was a lot heavier than he’d expected. He prayed he wouldn’t need it.

Rajiv gave orders to close in.



T HE B LACK S WAN’ S CREW lashed their ship to Grimjoy. Then, after they pulled on disposable gloves to prevent leaving fingerprints, they followed their captain aboard.

Goraksh accompanied his father because Rajiv grabbed his shirt and propelled him forward. The pistol dangled at the end of Goraksh’s arm. He wasn’t even sure if the safety had been switched off.

The Grimjoy ’s deck rocked beneath their feet. Waves slapped flatly against the ship’s hull.

“Do you know why I brought you last night?” Rajiv whispered into Goraksh’s ear.

“No.”

“Because you are twenty,” his father whispered. “Because you are a man. And because the men who work for me wonder why my son—my only son—hasn’t taken his place with me.”

Goraksh went forward to the ship’s cabin afraid he was going to be shot at any moment. He thought he might be sick.

“You are a Sikh,” his father whispered vehemently. “The blood of warriors runs through your veins. I put it there.”

Goraksh stood at his father’s side in front of the cabin door. He heard the woman crying within. She was also talking rapidly.

“Help! Anyone! Help! This is the Grimjoy! ” The crying broke up her words, but Goraksh knew anyone who heard her could still understand her. “We’re being boarded by pirates! Help!”

The thought of the woman using the radio twisted Goraksh’s insides into water. “She’s calling for help.”

“What are you going to do about it?” his father demanded. He released his hold on Goraksh’s shirt.

“Help? Is anyone out there? There are pirates—”

Goraksh was unable to bear the thought of getting caught by the Indian navy or coastal patrols. No matter what, he had to stop the radio transmission.



T HE CABIN WAS SMALL . A miniature galley and wet bar occupied the area to the left. A bed and shower cubicle occupied the forward and right sections.

A man, glassy-eyed in death, lay on the bed and rolled loosely with the pitch of the tethered yacht. He was in his thirties and looked American or European. Artificially blond hair was short and spiky. He’d been tall and fit, his skin bronzed by the sun. He wore brightly colored swimming trunks and was bare chested.

He’d also been dead long enough that his blood had settled in the lower part of his body. Goraksh had seen such things on television shows but he’d never seen anything like it in person.

The woman held on to the radio microphone as if it were a life preserver. She continued sending her message.

Goraksh shoved the pistol into her face as if he’d been doing it all his life. His finger wasn’t even on the trigger.

“Get away from the radio,” he shouted. Then he realized he hadn’t spoken in English and that she probably didn’t understand him. He repeated the order again as he reached for the microphone.

The woman jerked away. In the tight confines of the ship’s cabin, she tripped and fell heavily. She had a death grip on the microphone and tore the unit from the wall in a shower of sparks.

As she floundered on the bed next to the dead man, she cursed Goraksh soundly. Goraksh didn’t know what he was supposed to do next. He glanced back at his father as Rajiv came down the steps into the cabin.

Rajiv’s eyes rounded in surprise.

When he swiveled back to look at the woman, Goraksh was stunned to see that she had a small black automatic pistol clasped in her hand. She continued cursing as her knuckle whitened on the trigger.

The detonation sounded loud in the cabin. Goraksh’s ears ached with the blast and he was partially deafened. Sparks from the gun barrel singed his shirt. The bullet rushed in a heat streak beside his head, and he doubted that it missed him by more than an inch.

Goraksh pointed his pistol at the woman and fired back. He knew he’d missed, though. He’d hurried the shot and he’d missed. He barely even heard the reports because he was so scared. But there was more than one of them. He was sure about that.

Something burned into the side of his neck. He dodged away from it, but he knew he was already too late. He’d been shot.

The woman’s head jerked violently. Her blood splattered the interior of the cabin and landed warmly on Goraksh’s skin. He felt it ooze down his face as the woman fell over the dead man.

For a moment, Goraksh’s knees wouldn’t hold him. He thought he was going to fall. He tried to take a breath and couldn’t. He wondered if he’d been shot in the throat. It would have been horrible to drown in his own blood.

Then his father was there. Rajiv slipped an arm under his shoulder and kept Goraksh on his feet. His father turned his head gently with the heated barrel of the .357 Magnum and surveyed the wound in his neck.

Goraksh felt his blood pulsing out of him. It soaked into his shirt. “Am I going to die?” he whispered.

“Not today,” Rajiv replied in a choked voice. Tears glimmered in his eyes. “But I thought I had seen her kill you.”



G ORAKSH SAT in one of the upholstered chairs on the yacht’s deck and watched his father’s crew take the Grimjoy apart. They popped panels off the yacht and searched everywhere for hiding places.




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