The Other Crowd

“Everyone should learn how to do it the old-fashioned way,” he said.

Annja sensed he enjoyed teaching and the satisfying tedium of the old-fashioned way. She would never go against a director’s methods, and didn’t mind the old-fashioned way so much herself.

He handed her a trowel, and Annja squatted next to him.

In this quadrant, the crew had dug down to about the mid-nineteenth century, according to a small matchstick tin they’d found two days earlier. Wesley suspected they’d tapped into a farmhouse that may have held victims of the potato famine. He planned to bring in soil samples to a lab in Cork for verification.

“I suspect we’ll find the pathogen that destroyed the crops,” he commented. “As I told you, we haven’t found any bones yet. Perhaps this farmstead was lucky and the family found their way to Liverpool or even America.”

Neither of which option would have been preferred, Annja mused. The Irish immigrants arriving in America had been treated as second-class citizens, if they made the trip successfully. The emigrants crossing the ocean to find prosperity in America were usually struck down with disease and fever during the long journey on the so-called coffin ships. And if they did set foot in New York, they were discriminated against, cheated and treated cruelly.

In England they’d received no better treatment. As soon as they’d arrived in Liverpool most of the Irish riffraff had been deported directly back to Cork.

With the open dig plan, the entire squared-off area was dug down, and baulks, or aisles of dirt marked in a grid and not dug, were not utilized.

Annja preferred the open-dig method. It was well enough that the walls of the open area served as a stratigraphy to measure their progress. One stone wall had been unearthed, and Wesley’s crew had earlier uncovered a fireplace.

“Was that feature apparent before digging began?” she asked Wesley.

“Yes, the entire stretch of wall and the stones of the hearth. The farmer removed the turf and found it. We’ve got dirt here, though, not peat like the other camp. I’m guessing the enemy camp is looking at the end of a farm plot, perhaps animal stables and a pond.”

Wesley pointed out an area he was working on and she moved beside him to inspect.

“A wall feature, yes?” He traced the outline of an oblong mound with the tip of his trowel. “Probably another two or three feet into the earth. Puts us back another few centuries. I just wish we had the time to go at this slowly. Yesterday one of my crew destroyed a wood feature, could have been a table or part of a chair. Can’t blame her, though.”

Annja teased the dirt with her trowel and worked efficiently next to Wesley. “Why the rush?”

“Slater’s been pushing to get us all to leave. I managed to negotiate another week.”

“What have they found that they want to keep you off the entire dig so badly? Have you gone over and taken a look around?”

He swiped a hand over his hair and lifted his face to worship the setting sun. “Tried, but there’s security at night. Only one guard I’ve noticed, but I’m sure that’s a machine gun slung across his shoulder. Couple of nights ago they drove a truck in and something was going on.”

“You camp on-site?”

“Not usually, but I’d been tooling around with this feature, wanted to get deeper. You know how that goes.”

“You love the work,” Annja guessed.

“As much as I bet you love it. I gotta ask, and I hope you don’t mind.”

“Go ahead.”

“How did you ever get involved in a TV show that chases after stories like the other crowd?”

“We chase all sorts, actually. Werewolves, vampires, yeti.” Annja smirked. “We’re an equal-opportunity monster-hunting show.”

“Well, now, you ever talk to a vampire?”

“No. You?”

He cast her that sexy grin that Annja was beginning to realize must work as a sort of lodestone to any women within stumble-over-her-feet range. “Nope, but wouldn’t mind the conversation over roast pheasant with Vlad the Impaler.”

“He’s dead.” She lifted a trowel of displaced dirt and emptied it into a nearby bucket. “And so is Frankenstein’s monster and Dr. Jekyll. Not dead, actually, never existed.”

“Skeptic, eh? So why this assignment?”

“It got me here, sitting in a pile of ancient rubble, with trowel in hand. Couldn’t be happier. Well, I could.”

“How so?”

“Earlier, you mentioned the men who disappeared, but we were interrupted before I could ask more. Can you tell me anything about the girl who disappeared from this dig? Description? Was she friends with everyone here? Anyone have something against her? Was she native to the area?”

“Whoa, the detective is overtaking the archaeologist.”

“It’s what we do, isn’t it? Play detective. Search for clues and piece them together to create a story.”

Wesley tapped the trowel against his boot to shake off the dirt and sat back, wrists resting on his knees. “I wish I could help you, Annja.” He scanned the sky, yet Annja sensed his sudden lack of ease from the tapping of his fingers on his knee.

“Beth Gwillym was spending the summer here on the dig. She came from England, though haven’t a clue whereabouts. I don’t do background checks. Basically, if you’re willing and not stupid, you’re hired. She was pretty, young and amiable. I know it sounds awful, but I’ve been preoccupied with that other damned site lately. While I had in heart to keep my people protected from loose cannons like Slater, I should have been paying more attention to my own site. Beth was friendly with everyone, I do know that, didn’t have any enemies.”

“What about boyfriends? Anyone she was seeing? That she might have had a fight with?”

She couldn’t catch his facial movements because he’d tilted his head down, perhaps away from the sun. Annja suspected it was something less to do with the light than a need to keep secrets. Interesting.

“You’re not going to accept the well-agreed-upon fact that the other crowd snatched her away?”

Annja sighed. “Wesley, I know the Irish hold great reverence for…the fair folk. And sure, faeries like to steal humans, or trick them into their circles and make them dance for years and years.”

“They steal babies, too,” he added, more seriously than she wished. “Leave behind changelings, sometimes nothing more than a dried old stump sitting in the cradle.”

“Right. I don’t wish to challenge anyone’s pagan beliefs—”

“Ooh, the Catholic chick is challenging my beliefs.”

“What makes you say I’m Catholic?”

“A guess. Almost twenty percent of the world is. And I’m not a pagan, just a believer in what feels right.”

“Little people with wings feels right to you in this situation?”

He smirked. “No. But if you’ve read anything about the Irish legends of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, they’re not so little. Our size, actually.”

“I did do research on the flight here. They were warriors who landed in Ireland around 1470 BC.”

“Right,” Wesley said. “And after many battles against the original Irish, or Fir Bolgs and Milesians, they were finally defeated and went to live underground with the Sidhe. They never reveal themselves to humans, unless you’re one of the old folk who do put credence in the myth. I bet every other farmhouse in the county still puts a bowl of cream out on their back step before turning in, to appease the other crowd.”

“Bet the feral cats love that,” Annja said.

“Meow,” Wesley said snidely. “So I’m guessing I’ll never see Annja Creed’s name connected with astro-archaeology?”

“You got that right.”

Some astro-archaeologists believed humans on earth were descended from aliens, or at the least, they’d been given alien technology to create some of the amazing architecture throughout history. A person had to possess a certain degree of belief in the unbelievable. No skeptics allowed.

“Ever been to Puma Punku?” Wesley asked. “That site will make you wonder.”

“I have, and it did.”

The ruins in Bolivia were rumored to be seventeen thousand years old, yet they possessed remarkable stone technology. Some of the construction blocks were estimated at four hundred and forty tons. There was no known technology at the time that could have transported those blocks the distance from the quarry. The precisely cut stones stirred rumors of alien involvement in the creation.

“You know anyone with the other dig who might talk? Someone friendly and not packing a Walther?” Annja asked.

The sun beamed across Wesley’s face as he thought about it. Annja loved the rugged, adventurer look. He was a man of her kin. Happy under the open sky, and always with dirt under his fingernails, and a question that needed answering.

“Nope, not a one. They’re mostly new since the camps have split. Don’t really know any other than Slater. He’s a Brit, you know.”

“Got a problem with Brits?”

“As a matter of fact, they don’t know how to dig correctly.” He tapped her trowel, which she had been absentmindedly scraping across the surface, and now realized she’d nicked a piece of something white. “What do you have there?”

“Looks like a bone. Excellent. Let me show you how well I can dig.”

“All right, American. Hey, what’s that?”

Looking up from the find, Annja squinted and scanned the horizon. A crowd was gathering at the field edge where the grass grew high and both camps joined.

“Let’s go take a look.” Wesley left her behind, but not for long.

“Annja!” Eric appeared, gestured toward the commotion and took off, camera at the ready.

The cause of the excitement wandered onto the dirt area in front of a parked vehicle. A woman about twenty-two. Surrounded by curious people, she held out her hands as if to ask for space, or maybe just to keep her bearings.

“Beth,” Annja heard Wesley say.

The missing girl? She quickened her steps to join the gathering. The crowd was keeping its distance, not blocking her in, yet one woman took Beth’s arm and led her to a stop.

“Beth?” Wesley approached her. “Where have you been?”

The bedraggled woman stared blindly at Wesley. A few leaves were tucked in the dirty blond strands of her tangled hair. Her fingers and palms were dirty, as well as the knees of her khaki pants. All in all, though, she looked healthy; maybe she’d just taken a stumble in the dirt.

Annja recalled what Daniel had said about her disappearance. She had been missing a little over thirty-six hours.

“Who took you?” someone called out from the crowd.

“Yes.” Annja stepped forward and addressed the woman. “Do you know what happened? Who took you? Or did you get lost?”

Beth looked up and when Annja thought the frail, shaking woman was looking into her eyes she realized she was focused just over her shoulder—where Eric stood with the camera.

“The fair folk,” the woman said.

The crowd nodded, muttering that they knew it. Didn’t want to believe it, but now it was a sure thing.

Annja turned to Eric and rolled her eyes at the camera. “Cut,” she said.

6

Garin left the details of landing at the airport to his pilot. The man had never failed him, and always managed to land within minutes of his estimated arrival time.

Garin planned to send his luggage directly to his Manhattan penthouse because he was headed straight for the auction house.

Strolling toward customs, Garin mused over why he’d jumped so quickly at the snap of Roux’s fingers. He didn’t usually allow the old man to order him about. Hell, for more than five hundred years the two of them had embraced a sort of unavoidable acceptance of the other. Because they were the only five-hundred-year-old men walking the earth these days. They had a connection that neither would deny, and when one truly needed the other, all petty disagreements were overlooked.

And if Roux thought Annja would appreciate the Fouquet, then Garin could see that—much as he never wanted to look at that painting again. Obtaining it would be no problem. So long as he made the auction in time.

He checked his watch. Bidding didn’t start for another hour and a half. The limo could have him there in forty-five minutes.

Annja Creed. Now there was a remarkable woman. She put the woman Garin had left in his bed to shame. There was simply no comparison between the two.

Annja was a breed apart from the sort of women with whom Garin surrounded himself. She would never allow any man to push her around, to make assumptions regarding her willingness to please and/or serve him. Smart, sexy and adventurous, she also owned the one thing that kept Garin up some nights.

The sword once wielded by Joan of Arc.

It was a sword Garin had seen in use by the sainted young woman, for he had been apprentice to Roux when the man had been appointed to guard Jeanne d’Arc. For some reason, after the sword had been wrested away from the Maid of Orléans and shattered, Garin and Roux had become immortal. He didn’t know why, but he’d accepted the gift for what it was. Who wouldn’t accept immortality?

But now that the sword had been put together and Annja wielded it as if a mystical extension of Jeanne’s will—what then?

Garin couldn’t be sure if his immortality had been lost. He didn’t feel older. It had only been a few years since Annja had taken possession of the sword. And Lord knows he’d tried to take it from her, to smash it, and put things back the way they should be. But he couldn’t.

Out of Annja’s hands the sword would not remain solid, unless she willed it so. She could hand it to him to look over, if she wished—and she had. But she did not trust him to do anything more than quickly inspect the thing. And she shouldn’t.

But would he really break the thing should he again be given the opportunity? Some days he wasn’t so sure. Gaining Annja’s respect overwhelmed any desire to push her away as a result of stealing from her. He sincerely wanted to know her. To experience her in ways that not only included the flesh, but the mind and soul, as well. She fascinated him.

Very few women did so.

With a smile on his face, and his thoughts on the limber body of Annja Creed, Garin handed his passport to the customs official behind the counter.

He’d romanced Annja. He’d attempted to seduce her with fine things. She played along, but only so far. She wasn’t stupid, rather leery at times, and then at other times he could almost believe she was as interested in him as he her.

But to win her completely would end the wanting, the yearning, to learn more. And did he really want to spoil that anticipation?

“Did you have your passport, Mr. Braden?”

“Huh?” He steered his focus to the woman holding his wallet. He’d handed her his wallet by mistake? How one’s mind could get distracted when it was focused on a gorgeous woman. “Sorry.” He reached inside his inner suit coat pocket. “I have it…somewhere.”

Where was the damned thing? He’d had it on the jet. Had he dropped it after disembarking? “I seem to have misplaced it. I’m sure it’s on my private jet. I’ll just give the pilot a call—”

“If you’ll just step aside, Mr. Braden, we can work this out.”

Garin stroked his fingers down the lapel of his Armani suit and delivered his best sexy grin to the woman, who looked like she was serving the end of a thirty-hour shift and desperately needed a kind word. “I’ve got an appointment. If we can make this quick? I know it’s in the jet.”

The daggers in her look pricked his confidence. “Your jet just taxied for takeoff, Mr. Braden.”

“What?” He looked aside, as if to search for the jet, but he was too far from any window overlooking the runway. “We’ve only been on the ground twenty minutes. He couldn’t have refueled so quickly. Where is the man headed?”

“I have no idea, Mr. Braden. Please, if you’ll come with me.”

Garin slammed a fist on the counter, but refrained from swearing.

This was not going as smoothly as he’d anticipated.

7

Annja watched keenly as Michael Slater argued with Wesley over who would give Beth a ride to a hospital in Cork. Beth had disappeared from the good camp—as Annja had come to already consider Wesley’s camp—so why Slater cared was beyond her.

They didn’t argue for long. One of the women caught Beth as she fainted, and barked at Wesley to start up the Jeep. Slater conceded with a shake of his head and a glance to Annja. He’d obviously decided to blame her for things that went wrong.

“Quite the commotion, eh?” Daniel joined Annja as she turned to pace back to the tented area for a respite from the sudden mist. The saying was true: if you don’t like the weather in Ireland, just wait five minutes. She’d give it ten.

“Beth’s been missing for almost two days,” she said. “I can’t imagine what she must be feeling right now. Or thinking. She must be out of her head. At the very least, hungry and in need of a shower.” And so mentally traumatized as to believe she had actually been taken by faeries. “Is the hospital far?”

“It’s a bit over an hour’s drive into Cork.”

She would have liked to ride along with Beth and Wesley, asking questions as they made their way to Cork, but Annja did have a sense of compassion. And she had promised Wesley she would respect the situation. She was not a paparazzo desperate to get a photo of a wide-eyed innocent. Yet she must talk to her. Whatever Beth had been through could lead Annja to discovering the other men who had disappeared, and who was behind it.

“I might drive to Cork tomorrow, see if she’s coherent,” she said. “I don’t think she needs too much fuss right now. Wesley will ensure she gets the proper care. I suppose not much will get done on the dig now. I should head to my B and B. I’ve got some research to do.”

On hospitals in Cork and Beth Gwillym, she thought.

“You fancy that meal at my mother’s?” Daniel’s attention focused on the retreating vehicle, a strand of grass twitching at the corner of his mouth.

“A home-cooked meal sounds great, but there’s Eric, too.”

“He can come along. Mum always makes a feast on Fridays. She expects me to bring over friends. Girlfriends mostly, but I haven’t been a good son about that lately.”

He cast her a wink and marched off.

Had that been flirtation? The man had to be twenty years her senior. Not that he wasn’t attractive, albeit eccentric.

MICHAEL SLATER MARCHED across the trampled grass to the edge of the excavation site where the dried peat cushion made his footsteps feel as though he were walking on a strange planet.

The chief archaeologist, Maxwell Alexandre, was packing up his shovels, buckets and other equipment. He ran an efficient dig and was meticulous about putting things away at the end of the day. Slater appreciated anyone with a fastidious bone. Maxwell did what he was told, with little argument.

Rain rolled down his temples. Slater did not like the weather in this country; it was much worse than his native London, and that was saying a lot.

He gripped the handle of his Walther P99, still in its holster. It was something he did probably a dozen times a day. His training buddies had given him shit for his attachment to the thing. Bugger them. Some guys stroked their bollocks every now and then; he stroked his gun.

Alexandre popped his head up from the area marked off with pitons and ropes. “What was the commotion over there?”

“The girl is back,” Slater spat out. “The one the captain grabbed the other day.”

“How the hell did that happen?” Alexandre kicked the base of a black bucket, toppling it over. It was empty. “How’d she get free?”

“I don’t know, but heads will roll.” Twisting his neck against the tight muscle tugging along his jaw and throat, Slater nodded toward the black SUV that transported the crew into town each night. “You packing up?”

“It’ll be dark soon.”

“I thought you understood we are on a time crunch? I want to be out of here within the week.”

Everything else Frank Neville had his hands in was scheduled to come down to the week’s deadline. This wasted nonsense of digging in the dirt twisted his knickers the wrong way. He had not signed on for kicking about bones.

“I know that.” Alexandre stood before Slater. He was taller by three inches, but both men were aware that when push came to shove Slater held the upper hand. “I’ve uncovered the entire skeleton.” He gestured behind him and Slater eyed the ground. “She’s a beauty thanks to the peat. Preserves bones and bits of fabric real nice like. But not sure I’m going to find any more rocks.”

“Give it another few days. Don’t things tend to…move around over the years?”

“Erosion does tend to do that, though not so much in these conditions. We’ll strip the area for sure. Won’t leave a single pebble unscrutinized.”

“You think it could have spread as far as the other camp?” Slater asked.

“Unlikely. Such a contained cache is probably going to be within the marked area we’ve pitoned off. I think it would be next to impossible for the rocks to move from the bog to the dirt the other camp is working in. Unless an animal did it? That’s always possible. When’s the next truck come in?”

Slater tucked his hand under an arm over the pistol. “Not that it’s any of your concern, but tomorrow night.”

“Just want to know to get the crew out on time. Settle your britches, Slater, the operation is going well.”

“This operation is a joke.” Slater harnessed his anger. “The girl—Beth—should have never gotten away. I’m going to check on the guys down by the river.”

8

“We moved them.” Reggie Marks, the captain of the officious little barge that camped down by the river, scratched his belly, and slapped his grungy felt cap back onto his bald head.

“And in the process you managed to lose one helpless woman?” Slater fisted his palms. “I can’t believe your ineptitude. Who hired you?”

“Your boss, that Neville bloke.” The captain sniffed, drawing far too much phlegm into his nasal cavities for Slater’s liking. He hacked and spat a globule over the starboard side of the barge. “Ain’t gettin’ paid to babysit or mollycoddle. You want we should keep some woman fancy and entertained, then you’re looking at the wrong crew. Just be thankful I didn’t let Smelly Joe get his hands on her. That man breaks his women.”

Despite his managing to keep a handle on all the operations Frank Neville had set into place since arriving in Ireland, Slater hadn’t been quick enough on the draw when hiring the barge crew. Good men were few and far. Neville trusted Slater to oversee this operation and as a right-hand man for his business deals, yet he still did a lot of work on his own. He was too determined, and far too controlling, to sit back and let it all happen.

“What you standing there for?”

Slater winced as the captain snorted again. “Nothing at all.” He turned and strode off.

TO CLAIM THE OFFICIAL title of village in Ireland, the settlement had to have a church, a post office and a pub. No other buildings required. These three things met, you have got yourself a village, Annja thought.

Remarkably, the village of Ballybeag boasted the Four Corners. Each corner featured a pub, though for all proper purposes the east corner was more a grocery store/petrol station that sold diner food and poured Guinness, as well.

O’Shanley’s sat on the west corner and Annja chose it for its smiling pink pig painted on the window. Daniel had dropped her and Eric off at a quaint bed and breakfast and they’d dumped their gear in their respective rooms. They’d missed the supper call, but the proprietress had offered to make cold beef sandwiches for them. They had dinner plans, but she left Eric behind to gobble down a few.

She sat down at the bar next to an older gentleman and ordered a Guinness. The bartender nodded and went to work. She knew a properly poured pint was all about patience.

Eric ambled in while she was waiting. He set his video camera on the warped wooden bar, ordered a Coke and winked at her. “No drinking while on the job,” he said. “A man’s gotta stay sharp.”