Eternal Journey

The blood spot could be something.

She called the front desk again. “Hello. Would you please contact the police.” Annja didn’t know the Sydney equivalent of 911, or she would have handled that herself. “Send them up here as soon they arrive. And send someone from hotel security now, to Oliver Vylan’s room. Yes, room 312. I believe something…bad…has happened to him.” She replaced the phone in the cradle, ignoring the questions of the now nervous front-desk woman.

Had Oliver gone pub-crawling? she wondered.

He’d mentioned that possibility at dinner last night. Had he gotten himself into trouble at one of the bars? Had he come back bloodied from being on the receiving end of someone’s fist? That might explain the blood spot. But it wouldn’t explain his absence. While her cameraman wasn’t the politest of fellows, she hadn’t known him to be the type to get into a brawl, nor was he the type to drink to excess. But then how well did she know him? They’d worked together for several months, but never socialized more than sharing meals after shoots. He had family in New York, she recalled from conversations, two sisters, and he had a fiancée he mentioned often. Annja didn’t want to have to call any of them to report bad news.

“Oh, think, Annja! Calm down.” He could well be in the restaurant having breakfast! And the lack of suitcase and camera equipment might mean that he left them with the concierge in preparation for checking out.

There might be nothing wrong at all.

She let out a tentative sigh of relief and called the restaurant and described Oliver. “Are you sure he’s not there? Check one more time, please. It’s important.”

She felt her chest growing tight with worry and her heart racing. She was used to danger and had come to accept being shot at and kicked, but she would never get used to people around her finding trouble. The fatigue she’d felt from lack of sleep rolled off her, and again her eyes locked on the blood spot. Her breath caught.

The maître d’ came back on the line and interrupted her thoughts.

“You’re certain he’s not there? Yes. Thank you,” Annja said dully, and hung up the phone. “Oliver, what’s happened to you? What sort of trouble did you manage to find?”

She could have gone with him on the pub crawl, hadn’t really needed to turn in so early to surf the archaeology Web sites. Should have gone with him, she admonished herself, stopped him from drinking too much, getting into a fight, getting blood on the carpet of his hotel room, from worrying her so.

She knelt at the foot of the bed, fingers hovering above the blood spot, senses registering the smell of nicotine that clung to the carpet and the quilt.

Leave the spot alone, she told herself. You’ve called the police. Don’t interfere. Let them…She touched the edge of the spot anyway, finding it congealed but not crusty. Maybe only an hour or two old, she guessed. Maybe Oliver had been here when she knocked the first time before going to breakfast. Maybe if she’d been persistent then she would have found him safe.

“Should have tried the door then.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Ollie, Ollie, what trouble did you—?” She heard the elevator open out in the hall. “Police can’t have gotten here this quick,” she muttered. She jumped up, thoughts brightening. Maybe it was Oliver, coming back to the room to make sure he hadn’t left anything. Annja darted outside and nearly bumped into a long-nosed man with a hotel security badge on his dark blue suit coat.

“You’re the one who—”

“Called the front desk? Yes, I—”

“Reported trouble with one of our guests? A Mr. Oliver Vylan from the United States?” He didn’t have as pleasing an accent as the archaeologists she’d spent the past few days with. He sounded more British than Aussie, though there were similarities to both accents.

“Oliver Vylan, yes. My cameraman. He’s gone missing,” Annja said.

She stood there only a moment more, looking between the open hotel room door and the security man, and then she stepped around him and to the elevator and thumbed the up button.

“He’s gone missing, I say again, and I’m worried,” she continued. “I found a spot of blood. It’s at the foot of the bed.” She was certain now that some harm had come to Oliver, and that despite her best thoughts the cameraman wasn’t ready to check out and head to the airport.

“Miss…” The security man beckoned, clearly wanting more information about the situation.

“Creed. Annja Creed, room 914. I’ll be right back. I have to go get my cell phone.” Annja slipped into the elevator and pressed the button for the ninth floor, shifting back and forth on the balls of her feet, her flip-flops making squeaky sounds. “After I call home one more time. Try to call Ollie again.” And after I worry some more, she thought. “Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, what’s happened to you?”

The airport? Maybe she should call American just to make sure that he hadn’t caught the red-eye flight to LaGuardia. One final time she told herself that all this worry was for nothing, and that she was wasting the hotel security man’s time and soon the police’s time. She prayed she was wasting everyone’s time and that Oliver was all right.

But he wasn’t all right, she confirmed when the elevator doors opened onto her floor and she stepped out. At the end of the hall, the door to her room was open, and a thumping, bumping, crashing sound came from within. Someone was ransacking the place.

Annja didn’t panic. Danger was nothing new to her. In fact, it had been her constant companion since she inherited her sword and began her battle against whatever the forces of darkness decided to throw at her.

She reached for that sword now, touching the pommel with her mind and calling it from the ephemeral pocket of nothingness where it resided. She felt her fingers close on it, then just as quickly she dismissed it. Assess the situation first, she admonished herself. Don’t let worry rule you. She sprinted down the hall, flip-flops slapping against the soles of her feet as she went. She vaguely registered a door opening behind her, and then another, heard the curious whispers of hotel guests poking their heads out.

A heartbeat more and she was in the doorway of her room, staring at three dark-clad men who were tearing her things apart.

“That’s the woman,” the tallest of them said. He was standing on her shattered laptop. “That’s the one who was with the photographer. Kill her!”

4

Situation assessed, Annja thought. She mentally called for her sword again, in the same instant drawing it back as she leaped into the room, bringing the blade down decisively at the first man she came to, a swarthy, barrel-chested thug with deep wrinkles around his eyes. He was just beyond the doorway—the other two were farther back in the room, and he snarled at her and spit and fumbled at his back.

He was going for a gun, she knew instinctively, and she managed to turn her sword at the last second so she struck him hard in the side of the head with the flat of the blade, knocking him senseless. She would try to take them alive, at least one of them, she decided. Dead, they certainly couldn’t tell her what they’d done to her cameraman…or what any of this was about.

The barrel-chested man shook his head and continued to fumble at the small of his back. She released one hand from the sword and struck his throat with her palm, watching his eyes bulge. He was the oldest and appeared the most out of shape, the least threat, she judged. She turned her attention to the other two.

The slightest was a young man standing close to the window. He’d been pulling things out of her suitcase and tossing them every which way.

What was he searching for?

He’d dropped a pair of her shoes and gaped at her when she’d entered. He said something softly in a foreign language. She didn’t catch any of it, but she registered that his face was severely pockmarked, as if he’d had an illness or a bad case of acne in his youth.

The tallest, the one who had danced on her laptop, was near the desk. “Kill her!” he repeated. “Kill her!”

Clearly the leader, Annja thought.

“Are those the only words you know?” Annja instantly regretted her quip as he cursed and dug his heel into what was left of the hard drive.

The barrel-chested one, still doubled over from the second blow she’d delivered, made an attempt to regain his wind, but eased back against the wall and looked almost helplessly to the leader.

At first glance Annja had thought them all in some sort of uniform, but that wasn’t the case. Each wore black pants, the tallest in tight-fitting jeans, with the other two in slacks that one might wear to an office. The tallest had on a black polo shirt, with something embroidered over the pocket. He was moving now, and so she couldn’t read it because the fabric bunched. The wiry one wore a simple black T-shirt, while the wheezing man had a sport shirt with the buttons pulled tight across his middle. Two wore black leather shoes, the wiry one in a pair of new-looking gray running shoes.

All of them were slightly dark skinned, but not black or suntanned.

Not Aussies or aboriginals. Arabs? she wondered.

The barrel-chested man finally caught his breath, bolted upright and grabbed her arm, still grimacing in pain from her blows. His grip was strong and he maliciously dug in his fingers.

“She’s got a sword!” he hollered.

The tall one growled as he pulled a gun from his waistband. “I think we all can see that, Zuka!”

Zuka—she had the name of one, not that the tidbit was very useful at the moment. An unusual name, though.

“What should I do, Sute?”

Two names now. Annja knew Sute was an Egyptian name, a derivative of Sutekh, the name of the evil god of chaos said to have slain Osiris.

“Surrender, all of you,” Annja said, though perhaps too softly for the wiry one to hear.

“Kill her, I said! Kill her and we’ll be gone from here!”