Rogue Angel 53: Bathed in Blood (3 page)

3

Annja spent another hour shooting video of the castle ruins, footage she could splice in during the editing phase, and then packed up her gear. By the time she’d loaded the rented four-wheel-drive vehicle, the sun was just about down.

She drove through the small village of Čachtice, home to some three thousand residents, and headed for her hotel in nearby Nové Mesto nad Váhom, a town about five miles northeast of Čachtice.

Annja had been driving for less than five minutes when her headlights picked up a figure standing by the side of the road, frantically waving his or her arms. As she drew closer she could see it was a young woman of about twenty-five, dressed in hiker’s boots and jeans and wearing a canvas jacket against the chilly evening. Behind her, Annja could see a backpack sitting on the ground.

Her first thought was
hitchhiker
,
but then she caught sight of the young woman’s face and realized something was terribly wrong. She pulled to the side of the road about ten yards away, turned off the engine and got out.

“Are you all right?” she called from her position by the driver’s door.

The woman shouted something back at her. Annja recognized the language as Hungarian, or Magyar as it was known here, but it wasn’t related to any of the half dozen languages she did speak, so there was no chance of her getting the gist of what was being said. The woman’s frantic hand motions spoke a language of their own, however.

Come here! Quickly!

Most people would’ve been concerned at this point. A dark road with no one around made the perfect place for an ambush, and a woman driving alone in a foreign country would no doubt be an attractive target. Not only that, but she had just made it easier for any would-be bandits by getting out of her vehicle.

Annja wasn’t concerned. If this was a setup, she’d deal with it. She’d been in tougher situations before and had managed to extricate herself just fine. It helped that she was the bearer of Joan of Arc’s weapon, a broadsword she could pull out of where it waited for her—the otherwhere, she called it—with just a thought.

The sword had been shattered by the English commander who’d overseen Joan’s execution, the pieces scattered into the mud like so much waste. In the wake of that sundering something miraculous had occurred; the lives of the two men who had been assigned to watch over Joan, a knight named Roux and his apprentice, Garin Braden, were extended indefinitely. Both were over five hundred years old and still as hearty as they had been the morning their charge had met her fate.

Roux had set out to retrieve the pieces of the sword, and one by one they’d been reunited. Annja had been present when the very last piece had been added to the puzzle and the sword had restored itself in a flash of power that bound her and the blade together in a stunning, and rather unexpected, fashion. The sword wasn’t bound by the rules of time and space and so was available to her at any moment with just a thought. It made getting out of tight situations much easier.

The way the other woman was reacting, the obvious relief on her face that someone, anyone, had stopped to help, made Annja think that whatever this was, it wasn’t a trap.

When Annja got closer, she realized the ground had given away on the side of the road. The woman was still talking nonstop, but now she was pointing frantically into the darkness.

Annja suddenly understood what the woman wanted.

Down there. He’s fallen down there.

Annja turned around, intending to go back for a light, and the woman shrieked and rushed forward, grabbing Annja’s arm.

“Easy now, take it easy,” Annja began, but the woman wasn’t listening. She was clearly in panic mode, more than likely thinking Annja was leaving. The backpacker was talking a mile a minute, pointing into the darkness over the edge, and paying no attention to what Annja was saying.

Annja knew how to fix that, at least.

She dug in her heels, pulled her arm back sharply and yelled, “Wait!” as loudly as she could.

The sudden blast of sound broke through the woman’s panic, and she snapped her head around to stare at Annja.

Annja held up her free hand in a “take it easy” gesture. “I’m not leaving,” she said soothingly, hoping the woman understand a little English. “I’m going to get a light, so we can see.”

She mimed shining a light over the edge and looking down after it.

Understanding blossomed on the other woman’s face and she calmed down.

Annja turned and hurried over to her vehicle. Opening the rear doors, she pulled out one of the polymer cases containing the lights and carried it back to where the woman was waiting.

“I’m Annja,” she said, pointing to herself. Then she pointed at her companion and raised her eyebrows.

That, at least, the woman understood. She smiled wanly and said, “Csilla.”

“Okay, Csilla,” Annja said, “show me what’s got you so upset.” She extended her hand palm up in a sweeping gesture, the universal “after you” sign, and then followed Csilla as she hurried over the edge of the drop and pointed downward at a spot a few feet to their left.

Annja nodded and then set the case on the ground next to her. She flipped open the catch and pulled out a handheld spotlight. The light used only a single thirty-five watt HID bulb, but it generated a fifteen million candlepower light beam that was twenty-eight hundred feet long. If there was something out there, this light would find it.

She hit the switch on the top of the rig and the beam of light leaped into existence, throwing back the darkness. The brush lining the edge of the drop jumped into view, seeming larger than life in the cold light of the spot.

Csilla nodded and pointed again, more emphatically this time.

“Siet! Siet!”

Annja didn’t need to understand Hungarian to understand.

Hurry.

She did as she was told, pointing the spotlight in the direction Csilla was suggesting. Annja began to sweep the beam across the rocky slope below them.

At first she didn’t see anything but the jagged shale for which the region was known, but then she caught sight of a flash of white against the harsh gray of the stone. Slowly, carefully, she swung the beam back and found the object a second time.

It was a human hand.

Female, judging by the size and shape.

It thrust up from the slope as if it were waving to them. The hand was attached to a forearm—
thank heavens!
—and the arm presumably to the rest of the body, though she couldn’t see the latter. The woman was hidden by a depression in the slope.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” Annja shouted.

Silence.

She might be too injured to shout back.

“Hold on!” she called out. “I’m coming down after you!”

She thrust the spotlight into her companion’s hand and ran over to the rear of her SUV. She grabbed her climbing bag and carried it over to Csilla, who was keeping the light on the hand.

“Were you traveling together?” Annja asked as she pulled several pieces of gear, including a nylon climbing rope, out of the bag. “Did she fall?”

Csilla shook her head, but Annja wasn’t sure whether the woman didn’t understand what Annja was saying or didn’t know what had happened.

Annja pulled on a headlamp and switched it on, then grabbed the gear she’d pulled out. She looked around for a suitable spot to anchor her rope, finally selecting a tree that stood near the edge of the drop. Hurrying over, she pushed on it for a moment, testing its strength, before deciding it would do. Using a couple of slings and some carabiners, she quickly rigged an anchor and then fed the rope through it, tying the two loose ends together. She gave the rope—and the anchor—a good tug to double-check, then coiled the rope and tossed it over the edge.

She pulled on her climber’s harness, secured a locking carabiner to the front and then clipped on to the rope.

“I’m going down. Keep that light on her,” Annja said. Then she pointed at herself and down the slope in an effort to make her companion understand.

Csilla nodded.

Letting the rope play out between her hands, Annja began backing down the incline. The footing was loose, and therefore treacherous. Annja wouldn’t be able to get the other woman out of there if she cut herself on the shale while climbing down.

Slow and steady, Annja, she reminded herself. Slow and steady.

As she moved downward she began to edge sideways, angling toward the spot where the floodlight was shining. She called out several times, hoping for a reaction, but she didn’t get anything in return. That wasn’t a good sign; the woman was either too injured to respond or past the point of help. Annja hoped for the former.

An experienced climber, Annja was able to descend the hundred feet or so in less than ten minutes. She called out as she drew close.

“My name’s Annja. Can you hear me?”

No response.

Annja carefully maneuvered herself over to the lip of the depression and looked down.

The woman lay facedown on the hard stone about two feet below Annja’s present position, her long dark hair hiding her features. She was nude, which meant she probably hadn’t been Csilla’s traveling companion...and her injuries likely weren’t accidental.

The woman lay unmoving and didn’t respond to Annja’s repeated calls. Her skin was extremely pale—blood loss?—and the woman didn’t appear to be breathing.

The fall down the rocky slope had cut her body in several places, but there was very little blood around the wounds, leading Annja to believe the woman had been killed elsewhere and dumped here. Whoever was responsible must have expected the body to fall all the way to the bottom of the slope.

Fate, however, had intervened.

The woman’s arm had become wedged in the cleft between two rocks, arresting her fall and holding her body in place against the slope. If her arm hadn’t gotten stuck, her body would have been hidden from view and wild animals would’ve likely gotten to her remains long before anyone chanced upon them.

Someone would have gotten away with murder.

Getting the body out of there wasn’t going to be easy, especially on her own, but Annja had to try. She could take the time to go back to Čachtice and look for some help, but the woman’s weight might finally pull her arm free from the rocks while Annja was gone.

If that happened, the effort to recover the body would be considerably more difficult, never mind expensive.

No, if she was going to do something, now was the time to do it.

The question was, how?

The depression in which the woman’s body rested was filled with loose rocks and debris. The footing was going to be treacherous, and it would be all too easy to step on the wrong piece of loose rock and send the body sliding free.

What she needed to do was get to a point below the body and work her way up toward it. That way, if the body slipped, she’d be in a position to do something about it.

Annja climbed back up the slope a few feet and then moved a couple of yards to her right, far enough that her actions wouldn’t have any impact on the body’s position. She rappelled downslope about ten feet and then began searching for a suitable place to put an anchor. When she found it, a narrow cleft in the rock, she used a spring-loaded cam device attached to a sling to anchor the rope. She gave the anchor a tug to test it and then clipped the rope into it with another carabiner.

The wind had picked up since the sun had set, and the temperature was starting to drop. Annja could feel her hands tingle from the cold.

Get moving, she told herself. You don’t have all night.

With the anchor in place, she moved confidently to her left, picking her way across the rock face until she was directly below the body. She could see it on the slope above her, just a few feet overhead.

Annja climbed upward.

She moved as carefully as possible until she could kneel next to the woman’s body. She glanced around, hoping to find a spot where she could place another anchor, but all the debris made it difficult. Annja reached out and put her hand on the woman’s forehead. Her skin was deathly pale and icy cold to the touch, but to Annja’s astonishment she thought she felt some movement. The woman’s arm was stretched out by her side, and when Annja glanced at it, she saw one of the fingers twitch.

The woman was still alive!

4

Annja’s heart leaped. She reached out and felt for a pulse.

It was weak and erratic, but it was there.

In that instant, everything changed.

Time became the enemy, a crushing weight on Annja’s shoulders. The woman probably had internal injuries, and exposure to the wind and rapidly falling temperatures wouldn’t help. Every minute counted now. Annja needed to get the woman covered up, back to the top of the ledge, then off to a medical facility as fast as possible.

“I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m going to try to get you out of here. Don’t struggle—just lie still and let me do all the work. Understand?”

She leaned in close but didn’t hear anything. The woman’s fingers might have twitched again in response.

“All right. Hang on. I’m going to free your arm, then roll you over.”

Moving slowly and carefully, Annja put one hand beneath the woman’s left armpit—the arm that wasn’t trapped—and used her other to grasp the woman’s wrist just above the spot where it had become wedged between the rocks. She braced her feet as best she could and then, before she had time to worry about it a second longer, hefted the woman upward just enough so she could free her arm from the rocks.

No sooner had the arm come free than the woman’s body began to slide downward. Annja had already worked out what to do. She didn’t hesitate, grabbing the woman about the torso while pushing against the rock beneath her to stop their slide.

For one heart-stopping moment Annja felt the two of them sliding toward the drop below as the debris shifted in response to the added weight. Annja held the woman tightly against her chest. The anchor she’d placed would stop their fall, but Annja might drop the woman when the device jerked them to a halt. Thankfully the rocks were only settling into a new position, and they stopped moving just a second or two later. Annja sat with her back to the rock face and the injured woman held securely in her arms.

Annja looked down at the woman she’d come to rescue. Her face was as pale as the rest of her, but even in her present state Annja could see she was beautiful. Her slim face, high cheekbones and full lips were framed by long dark hair that was almost, but not quite, black. It didn’t take much to imagine what that face would be like animated by even the slightest bit of personality. Annja had no doubt the woman had been targeted for that very reason.

Beauty, true beauty, always brings the predators out of the shadows.

One of the woman’s eyes was swollen shut but the other slipped open, and Annja found herself staring into her brilliant blue iris. It seemed to focus on her.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got you. You’re going to be all right,” she told her. “I’m going to get you to the hospital.”

The woman blinked—which Annja hoped was a sign she understood—then moved her mouth slightly.

Was she saying something?

Annja bent closer until her ear rested less than an inch above the woman’s lips.

The woman tried again, her breath tickling Annja’s face.

“Krv...Grófka.”

Startled, Annja pulled back and stared down at the woman.

That was one Slovakian phrase she did understand.
Krv Grófka—Blood Countess.

“What did you say?” Annja asked, not believing she’d heard correctly, but whatever it was would have to wait; the woman had slipped into unconsciousness.

If she didn’t have hypothermia yet, she would soon unless Annja did something about it. Bracing the woman with her knees, Annja stripped off her coat, then gently lifted the woman and wrapped the jacket around her torso.

Now all she had to do was climb out of here while carrying the injured woman.

Get a move on, she told herself. Time’s a’wasting.

It only took her a few seconds to figure out how she was going to manage the woman’s weight while climbing. Taking a few slings from her belt, she fashioned a rudimentary harness and secured it around the woman’s body. Keeping her cradled against her chest, like a mother carrying a child, Annja clipped the rigging into her harness.

If she slipped, at least they’d fall together.

Try not to slip.

Right. Gotcha.

Holding the woman against her chest with one arm, Annja got to her feet and began carefully moving back to the spot where she’d anchored the rope.

Csilla must have been watching what she was doing, for the light moved with Annja, lighting the way. It was full dark now so Annja was glad for its presence; it kept her from feeling alone. Once she reached the anchor, she swiftly unclipped it and stowed it back on her belt. With the rope now free she immediately began climbing upward.

Annja pulled on the rope while powering herself up the slope with her legs. Step by step, she made her way up the slope to where Csilla waited.

At the top, Csilla stepped forward and took the injured woman out of Annja’s arms, allowing Annja to clamber over the edge and back on solid ground. Once there she unclipped from the rope, left it and the rest of her gear right where it fell and hurried over to her SUV, Csilla close at her heels. Between them they lay the injured woman across the backseat, and then Csilla climbed in back with her while Annja got behind the wheel.

“Hang on!” Annja cried as she started the vehicle, threw it in gear and stomped on the accelerator, sending a stream of gravel flying out behind them as they shot down the road in the direction of Nové Mesto nad Váhom.

The village of Čachtice was closer, but it didn’t have a hospital. Nové Mesto might be a few miles farther, but it had three separate hospitals, one of which wasn’t all that far from her hotel. That was where Annja headed.

Knowing time was critical, Annja kept the accelerator mashed to the floor, rocketing down the narrow road as fast as she dared. She was betting they had two and a half, maybe three miles before they hit the town limits, and she let the SUV eat up the distance like a hungry beast, racing through the night.

A gentle melody broke into her train of thought, and when Annja glanced in the mirror, she found Csilla singing softly to the woman cradled in her arms. Annja didn’t understand a word, but the tune and the tone of the lyrics was soothing, making her think it might be some kind of Hungarian lullaby. Csilla must have sensed she was watching, for she looked up and caught Annja’s gaze with her own, then shrugged, as if to say,
What else can I do?

Annja nodded back at her, understanding exactly how Csilla felt, and then focused on the road once more, demanding that the car go faster, as if by force of will alone they could beat the clock that was silently ticking down around them.

It wasn’t long before they hit the town limits. Nové Mesto was nearly ten times the size of Čachtice and had the corresponding increase in traffic as well, but Annja didn’t slow down as Csilla leaned over the front seat and said,
“Siet!”

Annja didn’t need to be told twice. She leaned on the horn and began weaving in and out of traffic, shouting at people to get out of her way despite the obvious fact that they couldn’t hear her. It didn’t matter; the yelling helped release some of her stress, which, at the moment, was a welcome relief.

By the time they hit the town center they’d picked up a police escort. Annja barely heard the warbling of the siren—she was completely focused on keeping them alive long enough to reach the hospital. When the white multistory structure with a big red cross on the front appeared, she gave a shout of victory and roared into the parking lot, the police close behind.

Annja slammed the SUV into Park and jumped out, hands in the air, as the police car braked nearly on top of her. As soon as the officer managed to extricate himself from the car, he ran for the hospital doors. By then Annja had the door to the SUV open and was taking the still form of the injured woman from Csilla’s arms. As she turned toward the hospital doors they burst open from the inside and the cop returned, this time with a doctor, an orderly and a rolling stretcher.

The doctor said something in his native tongue and she shook her head. “I don’t speak Hungarian.”

“What happened?” he asked, switching to English as he helped her lay the injured woman on the stretcher.

“I don’t know. We found her halfway down a ridge by the side of the road a few miles north of Čachtice.”

The doctor glanced at the cop, then bent over the patient. “Was she coherent when you found her?”

Annja remembered the comment she thought she’d heard.
Blood Countess.

“No,” she answered, brushing off the memory as a figment of her imagination. “She looked at me and seemed to understand what I was saying, but that’s all.”

The doctor nodded to show he’d heard her, but his attention was mainly on his patient. He began giving instructions to the orderly as they wheeled the stretcher toward the door. They were met by a pair of nurses and the little group quickly disappeared inside. To Annja’s surprise, Csilla followed them.

As she watched them go, someone beside her said, “You should get that looked at.”

Annja turned to find the police officer pointing at her leg. Looking down, she was surprised to find a nasty scrape across her right calf leaking blood into the top of her boot. She hadn’t even been aware she’d cut herself, the adrenaline rush masking any pain she might have been feeling.

“Lovely,” she said as the pain finally hit. It wasn’t a serious injury, but it stung like a son of a gun. She glanced toward her SUV, then back at the police officer. He was a young guy, in his midtwenties or so.

“Don’t worry, miss. I’ll keep my eye on it while you get that taken care of,” he said, standing a bit straighter under her scrutiny.

She gave him a smile. “Thanks. I appreciate it,” she said, and then limped into the hospital after the others.