Carpathian (31 page)

“You’re worth millions upon millions right now, what more do you want?”

“Nothing. The money I received will ensure that my people are not without as they have been for so many years. No more sheep, no more cows and chickens. We deserve better and now we are going to live the way we were always meant to live.” Marko took a menacing step toward the Russian mobster, making the bodyguards move toward him. But a hand held high by Zallas stopped them. “If you go north of this toy castle I will not be able to control … control some of my friends.”

Dmitri Zallas saw Marko turn and start to walk away and then stop and face the Russian once more.

“You also need to have these fools of yours,” he gestured to the armed men in black coats, “looking for a woman with black hair in the company of a small boy. She will be coming your way on her trek to the pass. It would be to your benefit to have this woman held and then brought to me. She is not to be harmed in any way.”

“Ahhhh, now I see, the little sister returns to the fold. I can see why you’re so hard to deal with lately, my friend. Not to worry, she cannot get through my men. They are the best there is. The resort is the most guarded property this side of the Kremlin, I assure you.”

Marko laughed and then turned away but the laughter remained.

Zallas watched the Gypsy leave and then he snorted and pulled up his pants. He looked at his guards until they all turned away. He walked back to the window looking down upon the cable car lines and the resort far below. He swallowed and then closed his eyes blocking out the visage of Marko Korvesky, the bearded man who was the only person in the world that frightened Dmitri Zallas.

He soon gestured toward the larger of the bodyguards. The man was a Spetsnaz commando from the former Soviet Union and was linked to Zallas by pure meanness.

“Yes, Mr. Zallas?”

“Are we ready for Saturday night?”

“That Gypsy will lead us to it and there will not be anything this side of hell that can stop us from getting the information you seek from him.”

Zallas nodded just once as he turned to the opposite window and watched Marko walking the trail that led to the mountain above. He was there with his ever-present guard of four of the burliest-looking Gypsies Zallas had ever seen. They walked slowly and then disappeared into the trees. He turned and faced his man once more.

“If what I think is true, our limited partner has a secret that may make this resort’s worth pale in comparison. Yes, our Gypsy friend will let us in on that secret very soon and then I suspect we will discover where all of this ancient finery is coming from.” He smiled. “Have your former friends from your formative days been alerted that we move on Patinas on Saturday night at the latest?”

“They have arrived on the property and are awaiting your orders.”

“And they will have no problem doing the tasks I have set for them?”

“They will wipe out every man, woman, and child in that village if the need arises.”

Zallas turned away and watched the spot where the Gypsy had vanished into the tree line.

“For what he has hidden up there, believe me, the need will more than likely arise.”

As he watched the tree line he saw the shadows of the afternoon play against the gentle sway of the thin pines that made up the woods in the area. He could swear the shadows shifted shape against the force of the wind. He shook his head and sent the thought of things that go bump in the night out of his head.

As Zallas turned away from the window he failed to see the giant wolf as it slowly slid onto the crag on the side of the mountain beside the castle only ten feet away from the window where he had just been standing.

*   *   *

It was three hours later that Marko saw Stanus sitting beneath his grandmother’s window. The beast did not see the man’s approach, which was strange as nothing escaped the notice of the alpha.

Marko stopped twenty feet from the small cottage and the spot where the giant Golia lay on its stomach with its muzzle pointing up near the open window of his grandmother’s bedroom. He looked around and saw that most of the men of the village had not yet returned from the high pastures of the pass and the womenfolk were busy with chores and preparations for the evening meal.

Marko watched Stanus as the muzzle lifted once more and the Golia sniffed the air. Then the head of the alpha turned to the human. Stanus stood up so fast that Marko flinched, which was never a good idea when startling a Golia. The beast growled. It was not loud and not even menacing. It was the alpha letting Marko be aware of the power that stood not twenty feet from him.

“Is Mikla home?” Marko asked. The dimmed yellow eyes took in Marko and that, in and of itself, was unsettling. “Stanus, is Mikla back home at the temple?”

The Golia stared at Marko and then its ears lay back and the giant beast yawned. Stanus shook its head as if it was just waking up from a long sleep, and then without another gesture of any kind the Golia stood on its hind legs. Marko heard the distinctive resetting of the hip and pelvic bones as they slid into their secondary sockets and joints. Marko was like anyone who ever witnessed the change. He never ceased to wonder over the Golia’s ability to physically alter its shape. He watched in amazement as the right paw lifted and the fingers came free of the folded fistlike appendage. The clawed digits and thumb grasped the windowsill of his grandmother’s room and then using the sill as leverage pushed itself up and over the back wall and then disappeared into the rocks lining the village.

Marko was confused as to the way Stanus was acting ever since Mikla vanished. Then Stanus went out of control with the workers at the castle and killed three of them because of what the Golia perceived as an invasion of their land. It had taken Marko over fifteen hours of hard mental contact to get the great wolf to understand that the change was necessary and that killing these men could only bring more men to the pass.

Marko walked to the front of the small cottage and then stopped at the wooden front door. He reached out after taking a deep breath and lifted the iron latch and stepped into a darkened house.

“Grandmamma?” he called out as he looked at the cold stove. Not even her ever-present teapot was warm. He quickly went to the only other room in the cottage, her bedroom. He saw her lying on her small bed. She was holding the blankets up close to her chin and she was shaking. “Grandmamma, what have you done now?” he asked as he rushed to her side.

He saw her ankle placed on the bed outside the blanket. His eyes widened when he saw the purple and black swelling. The ankle was cocked off to one side and she moaned with pain in her sleep.

Marko shook his head. He knew she had somehow broken the ankle and now she might get gangrene from the injury if not set by one of the women in the village very soon. As he started to sit on the bed to rewrap her ankle he heard his grandmother call out in her sleep.

“Mikla, hold still, you must hold still!”

Marko’s eyes widened and he stood from the bed, stirring the old Gypsy queen to wakefulness. She looked around, wincing at the pain in her leg. Her eyes settled on Marko.

“Talking in my sleep was I?” the Gypsy queen asked as she lay her head back on the thin pillow that was made up of old clothes and a flour sack.

“You really did it, didn’t you?” he asked. “Where is Mikla? Is he with my sister?”

“You leave them be, Marko.”

“You cannot do this. You are too old to be making the spell. Look at what it has cost you, old woman. We will have to take that leg off if you do not get better. Sever your link with Mikla now because you will not survive the amputation of your leg with only half your brain working to fight the infection. Let Mikla go so you can heal.”

“Would that not be a benefit for the man-child? Would not my death bring you the power you seek among the people, maybe even the Golia?”

“You talk with a feverish mind,” Marko said as he calmed and then sat on the edge of the bed once again, lifting her swollen leg to his lap. “You know that no one person has ever controlled the Golia. They walk their own path,” he said as he shook his head and examined the damage she had done through her link with Mikla, the large male wolf that was missing from the den and the temple.

“Yes, they do walk their own path. My grandson should take that to heart.” She tried to sit up but couldn’t. She took several deep breaths and then lay back down. “They also do not take deceit the same way as a human may. They cannot understand what a lie is. What cost comes with betrayal? These things they cannot comprehend unless they have the Jeddah spell cast upon them and then they see.” She managed finally to raise her head enough to see Marko’s eyes. “They see a great many things, even that which is hidden deep within your mind. They see, they understand, and they react like an animal would—to protect itself and those it loves. Not that much different from ourselves, wouldn’t you say, grandson?”

“So you are helping sister find her way back home?” he said as he started wrapping the ankle.

“She will be here,” the old woman said as she finally lay back down and closed her eyes. “There are a great many tasks for her to do.”

Marko’s eyes grew dark as he finished off the wrapping. He gently lay down his grandmother’s ankle and then covered her with the blanket. He leaned over and kissed her forehead and then turned for the kitchen.

“I’ll make you some bitterroot tea and then we shall await sister’s arrival.” He turned and looked at the woman lying in the bed in severe pain and then he tossed a match into the woodstove. “I even think Stanus and a few of the other Golia will be interested as well.”

“And why is that, man-child?” she said as she started to drift off.

“Because Stanus just discovered you are responsible for Mikla being gone, and possibly even dead. You know Stanus may not like Mikla, but the animal is one of his Golia, and he takes their loss very personally.”

As Marko delivered the threat, or warning, he turned to fill the teapot with water from the pump when he thought he heard his grandmother say one last thing. Then he shook his head knowing he must have heard wrong.

He gave the handle a few angry pumps and then stopped and looked back into the bedroom. He tried to think of what she had just said but knew he didn’t hear it right.

“None of this will matter in two days?” he said to himself when he realized what the old woman had said in her sleep.

He turned back to the pump and filled the teapot with cold well water.

“What in the hell won’t matter in two days?”

DANUBE RIVER DELTA, ONE HUNDRED MILES SOUTH OF PATINAS PASS, ROMANIA

The dark-haired woman lay with her head on Mikla’s heaving chest. She heard the whining coming from deep inside the Golia’s chest. For the first time in several hours the giant wolf lay still and was not attending to his broken hind ankle. The right rear paw and ankle was swollen to three times its normal size and walking on it the past night and day had only worsened a now critical condition.

Anya Korvesky used her Mossad field training to keep the injury as tight as possible and then releasing the pressure every ten minutes so the ankle could get its necessary blood flow. As it stood she was thinking that Mikla, a Golia she had known all her life, was critically injured and it was only the animal’s raw strength that kept it going. If a Golia lost the use of one of its limbs it became a danger to all of its kind—for a Golia that could not climb the steep rocks of the Carpathian Mountains a broken ankle was like a blind man in a gun battle, all of the power was taken from it. The Golia had survived by not allowing humans to see it in its natural element. Discovery would be the death knell of a race of beings that had been living next to civilization since the small mammals known as men crawled from the rocks somewhere in Africa.

Anya eased the boy’s head from her lap where he lay sleeping. They had traveled all night and were now just sixty miles from home.

During the daylight hours Anya was picking up vibes from Mikla. Random thoughts of the animal invaded her mind with a clouded picture of what was happening at Patinas Pass. She knew the animals were at once becoming divided, and then again together in a common goal, and Anya could not figure out the confusing picture she was getting. But the one thought she picked up from Mikla was the fact that Stanus, a beast Anya herself had never been close to, was the center of the troubles at home. Her brother, Marko, came and went in these thoughts, but she could not tell what his role was.

Mikla whined while deep in sleep and Anya placed her small hand on the animal and felt its intake of breath. She was tempted to slide her hand up and make the spell connection that came so easily to her kind. The one thing that linked the Jeddah with the Golia was the ability to become as one body and mind on a base level with one of God’s greatest creations. Her hand hovered over the white-tipped ears of Mikla. She closed her hand into a fist as she decided that she couldn’t afford to link wth the giant animal while it was hurt because it would incapacitate her to the same degree for as long as the link lasted. As she looked out from the stand of trees by the river she knew that losing control now could get her caught and the Golia killed, something she could never allow.

The hypnotic flow of the Danube seemed to calm the beast as it slept. This was the first time since the train that Mikla had rested without waking from the pain of its broken ankle. She decided it was time to wake and start the final run for home. She stood and looked down at the boy and the wolf. She nodded and then moved off to the river.

As she bent over to splash water in her face she thought about the general and the Mossad he ran. She couldn’t help but have the feeling that it wasn’t she who had betrayed the Israeli cause because she had been involved in something that was larger than the task and the road her grandmother had set her upon nine years earlier. She had not only lied to the Mossad, they had lied to her and knew far more than they should have about things involving the Golia and the cursed treasure wagons taken from the land of Egypt more than three thousand years before. She had many questions for her grandmother that would come after she warned her of Ben-Nevin—the colonel was closing in on her and she feared she was leading him right to the Patinas Pass.