The Thirteenth Skull (9 page)

So I spit right in his eyes. His grip loosened for an instant, and I gained the half inch I needed. I flicked the cap off the pen, pressed the button, and slammed the needle into his neck.

His eyes flew open and then froze that way. His body went stiff as a board beneath me. The dagger fell from his hand.

I picked it up and scooted toward the front of the ambulance. It was slowing down. I glanced over my shoulder and saw we were in the emergency lane, coming up on the scene of a pileup that blocked all three westbound lanes.

The ambulance screeched to a stop. I slid off the back before the paramedics could exit the cab. I sauntered over to the guardrail, just another old lady out for a stroll on the interstate with her six-inch dragon-headed dagger. Unfortunately, a cop was standing about twenty feet away. I looked at him and he looked at me, and so I gave him a little nod like,
Hey, sonny, don't mind me. I'm just your average old lady
out for a stroll on the interstate with my six-inch dragon-headed
dagger
. Then I threw one leg over the concrete railing and steeled myself for the thirty-foot plunge to the embankment below.

The cop shouted something and started to run toward me, his hand resting on the butt of his revolver. Like he would actually shoot an old lady, dagger-wielding or not.

Still, on the off chance that he might actually shoot a dagger-wielding old lady, I froze on the barrier.

I shouldn't have.

A black Lincoln Town Car pulled up behind the ambulance and two men in dark suits jumped out. One had a semiautomatic pointed at my head. The other man was focused on the cop.

“That's all right, Officer,” he said in a gentle Southern drawl. “We'll take it from here.” He looked at me and smiled. “Hello, Alfred.”

The cop didn't lower his gun. He didn't know who to aim at now—me or the dark-suited guy.

Dark Suit pulled an ID from the breast pocket of his jacket and held it up.

“Vosch,” he said to the cop. “FBI.” He smiled a second time at me. “Step down, Alfred. You made a good run, but it's over.”

“I gotta call this in,” the cop said. He still hadn't lowered his weapon.

The man who called himself Vosch nodded, still smiling, while his buddy ripped the dagger from my hand, pulled me from the barrier, and handcuffed me.

“Look ...” I said to the cop.

“Shut up, Alfred,” Vosch said pleasantly. Then he said to the cop, “Terrorism, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and interstate flight.”

The suit with the gun—now he had the muzzle jammed into my rib cage—dragged me toward the car as I shouted at the bewildered young cop, “These guys aren't FBI! Check out their wheels—since when do FBI agents drive Town Cars?”

I was slung into the backseat. Vosch's partner slid in beside me and slammed the door. The driver, a big guy with slits for eyes and a crooked nose, glanced at me in the rearview mirror.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Kropp,”
he murmured.

I could see Vosch talking to the cop, who had put away his gun, which I interpreted as a sign that he was buying Vosch's story. Vosch was showing him some papers, probably a phony warrant for my arrest.

“At least tell me why you guys want to kill me so bad,” I said.

They laughed.

Vosch walked back to the car and got in beside the driver. We roared straight back a few yards, spun around and then proceeded the wrong way to the next exit. I could see cars jamming all three lanes; the interstate was backed up for miles.

We exited onto Kingston Pike and headed east, toward downtown. I waited for the killing blow. It was the perfect time: I was handcuffed and helpless, trapped behind dark-tinted glass. They had been trying awfully hard to kill me and this was the perfect opportunity.

The blow didn't come. As we waited at an intersection for the light to change, I said, “Something's happened. Where are you taking me?”

Nobody answered. Vosch hit the speed dial on his cell phone. After a few seconds, he said, “He is acquired. Alive,
oui
. We will be there in ten minutes.” He had lost his Southern accent. Now he sounded French. He closed the phone and slipped it into his breast pocket.

“Whatever you guys want—whatever it is you're after—I don't have it,” I blurted out. “I don't have anything!”

“Be quiet,” Vosch said.

“Just promise me you won't hurt anyone. Take me, but don't kill anybody else because of me, okay?”

The guy beside me leaned forward and whispered something to Vosch in French. Vosch nodded, whispered something back. The guy beside me pulled a truncheon from his coat pocket and slammed it against my head.

05:04:10:51

I woke to the sound of a train rumbling nearby. For a few precious seconds, before the memory of what happened in the car came crowding back, I was ten years old again, lying in my bed in Ohio. My mom was in the next room watching TV, and I was drifting off to sleep, listening to the trains pass on the tracks about a half mile from our house. I'll never say I had a perfect childhood, but there were moments in it that
were
perfect, and that was one of them.

I heard chairs scraping across a wooden floor. Whispers. A stifled laugh.

Then someone said, “He's awake.”

Someone else said, “Open your eyes, Alfred Kropp.”

I did, but only because I knew I'd have to eventually.

Propped up in a straight-backed wooden chair with my hands still cuffed behind my back, I was sitting in the middle of a huge room, the ceiling at least two stories above my head, the walls lost in murky shadow. Detecting the distinct odor of coffee, I wondered if they had taken me to the old JFG warehouse at the edge of the Old City.

“Behold, the last in the line of Lancelot!”

The speaker was leaning against the edge of a table a couple of feet in front of me. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Slender. I'd never seen him before, but his face looked vaguely familiar. Like Vosch and his buddies, he spoke with a faint French accent.

“It seems fitting somehow,” he went on. “That you would meet your fate dressed like an old woman!”

“That wasn't my idea,” I gasped. I had a horrible headache from the knock in the car.

“I am not surprised,” he said. “That would be like drawing water from a dry well.”

I wasn't sure what he meant by that but figured he was calling me stupid. I squinted up at his face, at the aristocratic nose and sharp chin. Why did he look so familiar? I dropped my bucket into the well, trying to figure it out.

“If you have any lingering hopes of rescue, I would suggest you abandon them now,” he said. “We've taken extraordinary measures to ensure you were not followed.”

We.
The shadow of a man hovered near one of the tall, narrow windows. Vosch? Where were the driver and the guy who bopped me on the head? I held my breath and listened.

Someone coughed directly behind me and I thought I heard shoes shuffle on the hardwood to my left. At least four, counting the guy in front of me.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“I could take a stab at it,” I said.

“Stab.”

Age: twenty-two. Citizenry: French. Marital status: single.
Occupation: president and chief executive officer of Tintagel
International
. . .

“You're Jourdain Garmot.”

He laughed softly like I had said something funny.

“I said it was a stab,” I said.

“I didn't ask if you knew my name; I asked if you knew who I
am
.”

“You're the boss at Tintagel International,” I said. “And you've been trying very hard to kill me.”

He nodded slowly. “Which has proved more difficult than I anticipated.”

“You had your chance in the Town Car.”

“I've decided to let you live a little while longer.”

“Not that I'm ungrateful or anything, but why?”

He smiled. There was something familiar about that smile, though I couldn't put a finger on it. And his name. Garmot. Why did that seem familiar too?
Gar-mot. GAR-mot.
Gar-MOT.
What was it?

“A selfish desire on my part,” he answered. “I wanted to meet you—and naturally I wanted you to meet me.”

He walked around to the other side of the table and sat down.

“And that brings us back to my original question, Alfred Kropp. Do you know who I am?”

Garmot. G-A-R-M-O-T.

“I told you what I know,” I said.

His dark eyes glittered in the weak light streaming through the high windows. He nodded to someone behind me and Vosch appeared carrying a black case about the size of a bowling bag. He set it on the table between me and Garmot and melted back into the shadows.

“What's in that bag?” I asked.

Garmot didn't answer. Instead he asked very slowly and deliberately, “Who ... am ... I?”

Garmot. Gar-mo. Gar-gar-mot-mot. Mot-mot-gar-gar.
Sweat trickled down the back of my neck.

He stood up and now in his right hand he held a black sword. I had seen a sword just like it before. In fact, I
owned
one just like it. Tightly cuffed, my hands twisted uselessly behind my back as he came toward me, and all I could think was
How did he get my sword?

“Perhaps some context would help,” he said.

“That'd be great,” I gasped. “Anything helpful would help.”

“For we are not so different, you and I. We are both— how shall I say it?—reluctant players in a game not of our choosing. A mere two years ago we were living quite normal lives. You here in America and I in France. Both normal students in normal towns going about our normal lives. Until our normal lives were ripped away, yes?”

He leaned against the table, dropping the sword point between his spread legs and spinning it. Light raced up and down its length and sparked off the dragon's head embossed on the hilt.

Garmot. Gar-Gar. Gra-Gra. Mot-Mot. Mar-Mar. Mart? Marty . . . Marty-Gra . . . ?

“Like you, I resisted,” he said. “I refused to play. I wanted a normal life. And until someone very close to me was murdered, I thought—I had every reason to believe—I would have that life. As did you, I am sure.”

“I still want that,” I said. “That's all I want.”

“Irrelevant,” Jourdain Garmot said. “We have no choice now but to see the game to its bitter end. Bitter for you, of course, since you will not survive this day. But bitter for me, as well, for killing you will not mend my broken heart or return my beloved friend to me.”

He leaned the sword against the table and picked up the black satchel.

“You have lost many close to you,” he said. “Your father. Your uncle. The knight called Bennacio. But none so close as he who was lost to me. He was my mentor, my constant companion, my best friend. When news came of his death, I wept like a young child. He was all I had in the world, and though he was taken from me, I keep him with me, always. Would you like to meet him, the one who was so cruelly stolen from me?”

I wasn't looking at him. I was looking at the hilt of the black sword. It wasn't my sword; my sword didn't have the dragon emblem, but it was a knight's sword. All the Knights of the Sacred Order carried the black sword.

Dragon. Garmot.

He unsnapped the first clasp.

“I cannot bear for us to be parted, you see ...”

My thoughts started to spin in a panicky whirl.

Gar-Ger, Gera-gar, Gra-mot, Gram-ot, Gra-gri-mot-motger-grot, gram-to, mar-gro, mar-gor, mar-got, mog-art . . .

Mogart . . . !

“It's a ...” I whispered. “It's a—I don't know what it's called, but I think it's like ana-something—
Garmot
for
Mogart
...”

“The word you are looking for is ‘anagram,' ” Jordain said.

He flipped open the second clasp. “And as you say in America ...
speak of the devil.
”

Then Jourdain Garmot reached into the bag and pulled out a human head. It was the head of the man I killed in Merlin's Cave. It was Mogart's head.

“Say hello to my father, Alfred Kropp.”

05:03:48:21

“I didn't have a choice,” I choked out. My stomach rolled and I looked away from Mogart's mummified head. The skin had turned a deli mustard yellowish brown, tightening against the shape of the skull beneath. The lips had pulled back, revealing the teeth and giving the illusion of a snarl. The eyes had long since rotted away, leaving two empty black-filled holes. “He was going to kill me—he
did
kill me ...”

He ignored me. “ ‘The last knight.' I understand the one called Bennacio tried to take that title for himself, but in reality my father was the last knight—the last to fall as a result of your treachery.”

“
My
treachery? I don't think you know the whole story. Nothing against your dad, but he turned on the other knights—”

“Enough.”

“He betrayed them—”

“I said
enough
!”

He dropped the head back into the satchel, thank God, and slung it onto the table. He pressed the tip of the black sword against my throat.
That's it,
I thought.
I'm dead.
If you're nutty enough to carry around your father's mummified head, there's not much that will keep you from chopping off the head of the guy who killed him.

“The knights are no more, thanks to you,” he cried. “The Sword has departed, thanks to you! My father is dead, again thanks to you! His blood and the blood of all the knights cry to heaven for justice!”

His cheeks were flushed and he was breathing so heavily I could see his nostrils flaring. He nodded to someone behind me.

It was Vosch. He yanked me up and kicked away the chair.

I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen next, and my mouth went dry.

“The knights are departed, their time on earth brought to an end by you, Alfred Kropp,” Jourdain said. “And so, like the knights of old, after I assumed my father's place, I embarked upon a—what is the word?—a quest. A quest, yes! To finish what was begun. To complete the circle. The last knightly quest ... for the Thirteenth Skull.”