Serpent's Kiss

“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.