Mystic Warrior. Alex Archer

regularly, but after finding out about the glass ball made by Julio Gris, he’d accelerated his schedule.

      He needed a kill to calm himself.

      The panicked woman struggled on the king-size bed. Usually a victim’s attempts to escape would have excited him even more.

      But his anticipation was blunted. The news from de Cerceau gave reason to be hopeful that Julio Gris’s Key of Shadows would soon be in his hands. Everything else paled by comparison.

      He sat beside the woman on the bed but didn’t try to touch her. Even still, she managed to push herself away a few inches.

      “Don’t worry,” he told her and smiled. “I’m not going to defile you. I’m not interested in that. Do you know what heruspicy is?” he asked.

      She didn’t say anything, due to the gag, but he liked the sound of his own voice.

      “Do you believe in fortune-telling? Ever read your horoscope and tried to see if the day was going to go as it predicted? Surely you’ve done that.”

      Cautiously, the woman nodded. Tears tracked down her face, and he knew she was trying to please him. He didn’t like when they did that. He wanted hopeful fighters, women who denied their own mortality even when it stared them in the face.

      “Ah, you have read your horoscope?”

      She nodded but didn’t try to talk through the gag.

      “Sometimes they come true, you know.”

      Shaking, she nodded again.

      “Well, heruspicy is a lot like that. It’s a way to foretell the future. The Romans practiced it. But you still don’t know what it is, do you?”

      She shook her head.

      “It’s the practice of slitting open a sacrificial creature and reading its entrails. You do know what entrails are, right?”

      The woman knew.

      Frantic, she struggled against her bonds again but only ended up exhausted. SEEKER4318 allowed her to fight because she would tire herself out and that would make her easier to deal with in the end.

      Finally, drained, panting for breath, the woman lay in a quivering mass on the bed. Nobody had heard the noise she’d made while struggling over the blaring punk music in the next unit.

      Anxious to see what the future held, SEEKER4318 plunged his dagger into the woman’s stomach and ripped up through her breastbone. Blood poured onto the bed in a pulsing waterfall. Placing the knife to one side, SEEKER4318 pulled apart the wound he’d created and took out two handfuls of the woman’s insides for inspection.

      He felt even more optimistic.

      The Key of Shadows and the treasure of the Merovingian kings would be his soon enough.

      All the signs pointed to a good resolution of his present problem.

5

      “What are you doing now?” Krauzer clicked off his smartphone and walked over to Annja, who’d placed the scrying crystal on a camera tripod a short distance from the wall where pages of Julio Gris’s manuscript hung.

      “Checking for a hidden message.” Annja took the high-powered miniflashlight from her backpack and shone it through the crystal, concentrating on one of the flat spots.

      “Inside the scrying crystal?” Krauzer scoffed.

      “The manuscript Julio Gris left indicates that the message is concealed somewhere inside.” Annja moved the flashlight and the crystal at the same time.

      The diffused beam of light shone through the crystal and onto the first manuscript page.

      “You need to be careful with that,” Krauzer warned. “That’s one of a kind. I can’t replace that crystal in the movie. I’ve shot too many core scenes with it.”

      “If you got a 3-D modeler, you could make one of these on a 3-D printer,” Orta told him.

      “Movie audiences can tell when something’s real these days. They like real stuff in their movies.”

      Annja looked at him. “This is supposed to belong to an elf witch.”

      “Hey, viewers want to believe in elf witches and hobbits and dragons. I’m not going to argue with them. I’m going to give them what they want. In fact, I’ll give them bigger dragons than they’ve ever seen before.”

      Ignoring the director, Annja continued to shine the light across the pages. She wasn’t frustrated yet, but her options were limited. And she was constantly aware of Krauzer growing more and more impatient.

      “Did Julio Gris tell you to shine a flashlight through the crystal?” Krauzer asked smugly. “Because that right there would tell you that manuscript is a fake. They didn’t have flashlights back when Juan Cabrillo sailed to California, right?”

      Annja ignored the question.

      “Right?”

      Knowing Krauzer wasn’t going to let up until he was answered, Annja said, “Right.”

      “So we’re all done here? I’ve saved you from wasting more time. I can take my scrying crystal and get back to the studio, and you and the professor can look at old crap to your hearts’ delight.”

      “Gris suggested using natural light or a candle flame to reveal the message,” Orta said. “We’re using a flashlight because it’s more accurate and it’s not daylight outside.”

      Krauzer folded his arms. “Shining a light through a crystal sounds really stupid, if you ask me.”

      “Have you ever heard of a magic lantern?” The frustration in Orta’s voice turned his words ragged.

      “Of course I have. ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.’ Aladdin’s lamp. Even Uncle Scrooge McDuck went looking for a magic lamp. That stuff’s all old.”

      “A magic lantern,” Orta said in a louder voice, “was an early precursor to filmmaking.”

      “So were hand puppets.”

      Orta sighed. “I’m just saying that there was a basis for this use of the scrying ball.”

      “Okay, but I’ve got to take that crystal and scoot. We’ve got an early shoot planned tomorrow. Morning sunlight doesn’t last forever.” Krauzer tapped his watch, then answered his ringing phone again.

      Annja was thankful. The man was too accustomed to being in control. She rotated the crystal and shone the light through the other flat spots onto the pages.

      Her back ached from the combination of constant bending and anticipation. Something had to be here. Unless the scrying crystal was not the one mentioned in the manuscript.

      Or if the manuscript was a hoax.

      Krauzer punched his phone off and returned to observe. “Well, that was good news.”

      Neither Annja nor Orta bothered to ask what the good news was.

      “That was Rita, my personal assistant. She had to wait until the cops left, but she got my gun back.”

      Annja straightened and reconsidered the problem.

      “So, you’re satisfied there aren’t any secret messages in the crystal?” Krauzer asked. “I can get back to the studio?”

      The director’s words turned the possibilities around in Annja’s mind. She glanced at Orta. “I think we’ve been going at this wrong.”

      “What do you mean?” Orta asked.

      “Maybe the message is inside the crystal.” Annja pressed the flashlight onto one of the object’s flat areas. The light caused the crystal to glow softly as the illumination