The Dragon's Mark. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ collection Roux had accumulated over the course of his extended lifetime. There were many more rooms just like it scattered throughout his home. But this room was special, Annja recalled. She had spent some time in it during a previous visit, for it contained a certain type of weapon that she had grown rather attached to lately.

      Swords.

      The collection contained both working blades and a few museum-quality relics, but nothing that was overly valuable and certainly not much that could be moved easily on the open market. The thieves, if that was indeed what they were, were in for a rude surprise if they thought differently.

      And they still had to contend with her.

      She raced to the door and flattened herself against the wall beside it. She put her head against the wall, listening, but Roux’s mansion had been built in the days when they had used quality building materials rather than the cheap substitutes that had become so common today. She couldn’t hear anything but her own breathing.

      She was going to have to do this the hard way.

      Gripping her sword in one hand, Annja grabbed the doorknob with the other, took a deep breath and then pulled it open, slipping inside with barely a sound.

      She’d been right; it was one of the display rooms. Swords lined the walls by the hundreds—long swords, short swords, broadswords, cutlasses, épées, scimitars—every make, model and size, it seemed. The carefully polished blades shone in the spotlights that had been artfully arranged to draw attention to the weapons, and here and there the wink of precious gems gleamed back at her from scabbards or hilts.

      But Annja barely noticed the swords on the walls, for her attention was captured by those held in the hands of the intruders facing her.

      One week earlier

      ANNJA WAS CARRYING SEVERAL bags of groceries up the stairs to her Brooklyn loft when her cell phone rang.

      “Hang on, hang on…” she said to it as she juggled the bags, managed to get the key in the lock and kicked the door open with her foot.

      Her phone continued to ring.

      “I’m coming, just hang on!” she told it again, as if the inanimate hunk of metal and plastic could actually hear her. She rushed to the island in the kitchen, dumped the bags on the counter and grabbed for her phone.

      Just as she managed to pull it from the front pocket of her jeans it stopped ringing.

      “You have got to be kidding!” She scowled at it, ready to fling it across the room in a pique of anger, only to have it ring again.

      “Hello?” She practically shouted it into the tiny device.

      A deep, rich voice answered her back. “Annja, did I catch you at a bad time?”

      There was no mistaking the voice. That teasing tone, that undercurrent of danger—only one man in her life sounded like that.

      “What do you want, Garin?”

      All that rushing? For him? It said something about her social life, that was for sure, she thought.

      “Now is that any way to treat an old friend?”

      “Old, yes. Friend, that remains to be seen.”

      “You wound me, Annja, you really do.”

      She kicked off her shoes, wandered into the living room and dropped onto the couch.

      Garin Braden. Empire builder, artifact hunter, rogue—he had a thousand different faces. The problem was, you never really knew which one you were dealing with, and by the time you did, it was often too late to save yourself. Annja had seen him ruthlessly kill more than one individual and yet had also known him to be charming and tender. She still wasn’t sure just what she felt about him; he was larger than life, with his rakish good looks, thick black hair and piercing gaze, but at the same time he had the heart of a devil.

      “So be wounded,” she said. “Then when you’ve finished feeling sorry for yourself maybe you could tell me what you want.”

      Garin swore under his breath and the sound of his frustration made Annja smile. She wasn’t the only one with mixed feelings, she realized.

      “I am calling,” he said, “to invite you to Paris.”

      Paris? That was a surprise.

      “What for?” she asked.

      “Can’t I just invite you to Paris?”

      “You could, but you know I wouldn’t come, so what’s the real reason?”

      Garin was silent for a moment, and then grudgingly said, “It’s the old man’s birthday.”

      Annja knew there was only one individual Garin could legitimately refer to that way.

      Roux.

      Old was right, she thought. More than five hundred years old, if the truth were told. Garin himself wasn’t that far behind, for only a few decades separated the two men. The same mystical force that had preserved the sword of Joan of Arc, the sword that Annja now carried as her own, had also given the two of them an extended lifetime. One measured in centuries, rather than decades.

      “It’s Roux’s birthday?”

      “I just said that, didn’t I?”

      Yes, yes, he had. Despite Roux’s long life, Annja knew that he wasn’t the type to celebrate birthdays, so that only increased rather than eased her suspicions.

      “You’re going to throw Roux a birthday party?” She couldn’t mask the incredulity in her voice.

      Garin had apparently lost his patience with her for he let loose a stream of curses that could have burned the hair off a pirate’s chest.

      Annja waited him out and then said, “Okay. I’m in. When is it?”

      Still grumbling, he named a date only three days away.

      “Nothing like giving a girl time to think it over,” she said.

      “What? Like you’ve got something else on your social calendar?” Garin shot back and from his tone Annja knew he was rather pleased with himself for that one. Before she could think of a retort, he went on. “I have tickets reserved in your name on the 9:00 p.m. flight out of Kennedy on the twelfth. My driver will pick you at DeGaulle, take you to Roux’s for the party and drive you back to your hotel afterward.”

      And with that, he hung up.

      “Garin? Garin!”

      Hanging up the phone, she went back to putting away the groceries. While doing so she glanced at her calendar. The bare white spaces stared back at her. Well, what did you expect? she asked herself. Given your lifestyle, it is amazing you have any friends at all.

      She had to admit, she’d never been one to stay in one place for long before she’d taken up Joan’s sword, never mind afterward. If she wasn’t headed off to some remote spot to film a new episode of Chasing СКАЧАТЬ