Serpent's Kiss. Alex Archer

      “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