The Mortality Principle. Alex Archer
you’re talking about. I just don’t understand what your interest in it might be. After all, it’s a fairy tale.” He paused for a moment. There was an anguished tone lurking beneath his voice when he continued. “I’ve always thought that you considered what you do to be a proper job. Something worthwhile. Not frivolity. Was I wrong?”
Annja didn’t think she’d ever heard him use those kinds of words to describe what she did. “There’s a story here. It’s something that viewers might be interested in, yes, but it’s more than that. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were deliberately being antagonistic. This isn’t like you. So I’m just going to ignore it. I refuse to rise to the bait.”
“Not antagonistic, merely surprised.” She heard the tap of keys as Roux followed up the links to the web-pages she had sent him. “There’s quite a bit here,” he said after another minute or so. “I’ll call you in half an hour.” He hung up without waiting for her response.
It wasn’t the first time he had done that to her, and odds were it wouldn’t be the last. With half an hour to kill, she carried on scrolling through everything she could find about the recent spate of killings in the city while she watched the seconds crawl by. Once upon a time losing herself like Alice down the rabbit hole of the internet could have swallowed thirty minutes in the blink of an eye. All she had to do was follow a link, then another that branched off from the first toward something vaguely interesting, and then another, and suddenly half the day was gone. It wasn’t like that now. Now every second dragged and every link offered frustration.
Even so, fifteen minutes had been wasted by the time her phone rang.
Roux’s name flashed on the screen.
“That was quick,” she said, after snatching it up.
“Some things don’t take long to read,” the old man said. His voice had changed in the few minutes since he’d hung up on her. She knew him well enough to know that meant something was wrong.
“Talk to me. What do you think?”
He waited a moment, as though weighing up what, precisely, to say to her. Finally he said, “I think you might be getting caught up in something you don’t understand.” It was blunt and to the point. And it meant there was no way she was walking away from this now. Because, as well as she knew him, the old man knew her, too. He knew exactly what to say to plant the seed that would grow into obsession.
“I know what you’re doing,” she said. “You’re not the kid-gloves kind of guy. Spill.”
She could hear the smile in his voice. “I was merely observing that this might not be as simple as it seems.”
“And you know what it’s like when you dangle imminent danger in front of me,” Annja said. “I can’t resist.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t rather your television show had taken you somewhere else, just this once.”
“So, what do they say?”
“Ostensibly they cover a spate of murders in the Czech capital, and the journalist who wrote these articles—Jan Turek—has found a way of linking them to the legend of the golem. But this, I suspect, you already know.”
“I do. It’s why I sent you them.”
“Almost everything in Prague can be linked to the legend in some way, Annja. It is a city filled with hidden dangers. Most of the time they stay hidden, but every now and then one of them finds its way out into the daylight.”
“What does it say, Roux? I’m a big girl. I can look after myself.”
“Just that Turek believes some ancient evil has stirred. I want you to promise me you won’t do anything stupid, Annja.”
“I can’t promise that,” she said, trying her best to sound light and breezy rather than like some petulant teenager. “Anyway, it’s not like I’m on my own.”
“I don’t think that cameraman of yours is likely to be much help.”
“I’m not talking about Lars. Garin turned up this morning.”
“Garin? What on earth is he doing there?” Roux asked. Annja noted the change in his voice. It was more than just the mention of Garin’s name. Maybe, she surmised, it was even part of the reason why he was here in Prague.
“Did he say why he wanted to see you?” Roux asked, following an identical train of thought.
“No. He made out that he was bored. And to be brutally honest, he seemed intent on relieving that boredom with the waitress who served us breakfast.” She expected some kind of response from Roux, some barbed comment about the younger man’s proclivities, some damning indictment of his lifestyle. None came.
Instead, he said, “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it properly. I’m coming. Don’t go out after sunset. I’ll be there in a few hours.”
“Roux?” Something really had him spooked. “You don’t have to.”
“I do. Believe me. There are things about that city you don’t understand. Ancient forces. Evil. I am not leaving you alone there.”
“Okay, Roux, now you’re scaring me.”
“Good. It’s good to be scared.”
“Should I warn Garin?”
“He went there with his eyes open. He almost certainly knows what these murders mean. He isn’t a fool, and to use one of your own rather eloquent turns of phrase, he’s big enough and ugly enough to take care of himself. I have a few things to take care of, but I’ll be with you before sunrise. In the meantime, do not go out after dark. Promise me.”
“I promise,” Annja said, knowing it was a promise she was absolutely going to break, but promising it, anyway.
He hung up on her again. Twice within the hour, now that was almost a record.
What had gotten him so spooked? Ancient evil, dark forces. He wasn’t prone to talk like that. So what was so bad it would bring him running? And why no concern for Garin’s well-being? There was something she wasn’t being told and she didn’t like that. She didn’t like it at all. While she was the first to admit that she had a habit of getting into scrapes, she had something none of her enemies had: Joan of Arc’s sword. She didn’t need a bodyguard. All she had to do was to reach out into the otherwhere and close her hand around the reassuring familiarity of the hilt and it was there.
The sword had been reforged after so many years shattered, Roux having scoured the four corners of the Earth to find the shards of metal. That was how this had all begun so many years ago. It wasn’t a blacksmith who had healed the wounded blade—and yes, she’d come to think of the sword as something very much alive—she had done it, with nothing more than her bare hands. Garin had been there, as had Roux. They’d all been in this together from that moment on, despite some hiccups along the way.
Roux hadn’t exactly told her not to talk to Garin, only that he could look after himself. There was no way that she was going to stay cooped up in the hotel room. She thought about checking in with Garin, see if he wanted to do a patrol of the streets, try to shake something loose, but decided to call Lars, her cameraman, to warn him that he wouldn’t be getting a lot of sleep later.
“We’re going monster hunting,” she said when he answered.
“Now?”
“After sundown.”
Lars Mortensen sounded like his head was still somewhere up in Stockholm, his home base. When she’d settled on Prague for the segment, she’d reached out to a few of the cameramen she’d worked with in the region. Lars, who had been with her during their coverage of the Beowulf dig in Skalunda Barrow a couple of years back, jumped at the chance to work with her again. He’d told her he’d meet her under the astronomical clock in twenty-four hours, and like the punctual guy he was, he’d been