Grandmaster

 

For Devin

 

 

PROLOGUE

 

BOOK ONE: THE COILED SNAKE

Chapter One
 | 
Chapter Two
 | 
Chapter Three
 | 
Chapter Four
 | 
Chapter Five

 

BOOK TWO: THE WEARER OF THE BLUE HAT

Chapter Six
 | 
Chapter Seven
 | 
Chapter Eight
 | 
Chapter Nine
 | 
Chapter Ten
 | 
Chapter Eleven

 

BOOK THREE: NICHEVO

Chapter Twelve
 | 
Chapter Thirteen
 | 
Chapter Fourteen
 | 
Chapter Fifteen
 | 
Chapter Sixteen
 | 
Chapter Seventeen
 | 
Chapter Eighteen

 

BOOK FOUR: THE GRANDMASTER

Chapter Nineteen
 | 
Chapter Twenty
 | 
Chapter Twenty-One
 | 
Chapter Twenty-Two
 | 
Chapter Twenty-Three
 | 
Chapter Twenty-Four
 | 
Chapter Twenty-Five
 | 
Chapter Twenty-Six
 | 
Chapter Twenty-Seven
 | 
Chapter Twenty-Eight
 | 
Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

BOOK FIVE: THE GAME

Chapter Thirty
 | 
Chapter Thirty-One
 | 
Chapter Thirty-Two
 | 
Chapter Thirty-Three
 | 
Chapter Thirty-Four
 | 
Chapter Thirty-Five
 | 
Chapter Thirty-Six
 | 
Chapter Thirty-Seven
 | 
Chapter Thirty-Eight
 | 
Chapter Thirty-Nine
 | 
Chapter Forty
 | 
Chapter Forty-One
 | 
Chapter Forty-Two

 

BOOK SIX: THE RESIGNATION

Chapter Forty-Three

 

Preview The Forever King
 | 
Preview The Temple Dogs

 

About the Authors
 | 
Other books by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy
 | 
Copyright Information

 

 

S
omewhere a bell faintly tinkled.
The room was as large as a castle courtyard, lit by clusters of tall scented candles in each of the four corners, but the ceilings were so high that no light reached there. Looking up gave him the feeling of staring up at a dead sky on a night without stars.

Figures scurried by along the base of the walls. Their movements were soft, and although he could see only shadows, he knew that they were women.

Three feather-filled cushions, each of them eight feet square, were piled atop each other in the center of the room. A woman lay on the cushions, and he knew without being told that she was the one he had been summoned to see.

He hesitated, but the woman beckoned him forward with a slow movement of her graceful arm. She was naked but for a golden chain wrapped three times around her waist. As he drew closer he could see that her hair was black and long, pulled forward over her left shoulder so that it draped across her breasts. Even in the dim candlelight, her hair glistened like oiled glass and her eyes seemed to be made up of thousands of individual amber crystals, each of them reflecting light from the candles in the room. Closer to her, the scent of incense was stronger, almost overpowering. He drew it deep into his lungs and felt warmth radiate from inside him.

He stood now in front of the cushions, his knees almost touching them, looking down at the woman. Her body was as artfully arranged as an old master's composition; though she was naked, the placement of her hair and the shadows that darkened her made it impossible for him to see her clearly.

"Do you know why I have had you brought here?" she asked him in Russian. Her voice was musical, its pitch exactly the same as that of the bell that still tinged softly from one of the far corners of the room. He breathed deeply again. His body felt as if it were losing its muscles. He wondered if she had spoken or if he had merely imagined the bell was speaking to him.

She was looking at him, waiting for an answer. He tried to speak, but no words came. He shook his head.

"Because you belong to me," she said softly. Her eyes never left his face.

Belong to her? No. No one belonged to anyone else. He summoned up his will and again tried to speak. This time, with effort, he forced the words out. "Madam, I..."

She ignored him. "From the day of your birth, you have belonged to me."

"And if I do not so choose?" he said thickly. He was surprised that he had been able to speak the words; speaking was such an effort.

"The choice is not yours," she said, a hint of annoyance tingeing the smooth, throaty sounds. "You are only a man. Do not forget that. You are limited by your senses, your mortality. But I will make you more than a man."

She paused as if awaiting an answer, but he could no longer speak. The very presence of the woman seemed to obliterate his sensibility and reason. He wanted only to be invited to lie down with her on the soft cushions, to rest his body and his aching, confused mind.

"You are my chosen one," she said. "I have searched the earth for you."

He stared at her, unable to tear his eyes away from her shadowy face. "Why?" he asked softly, feeling cold. "Who am I to you?"

A smile flickered around the edge of her mouth. "In all things there is opposition, reversal. Yin and yang, light and darkness, good and evil. In those beings of power, there are also two sides. Do you understand?"

He drew a deep breath to try to clear his mind, but instead his lungs were filled again with the sinuous fire of the incense. This place was somehow infused with magic, he knew, powerful magic. Lapping around the borders of his consciousness was fear. The woman was soft and dark and smooth and rich as dreams, but there was no comfort in her for him.

"Is there someone who will come to this place?" he asked. "Someone to challenge me, perhaps? An evil man..."

The woman's smile broadened into a coarse, harsh laugh that resounded through the room.

The man did not understand. He waited for her to explain, but instead she rolled over onto her back without speaking. Suddenly her body came alive, breasts thrust forward, the dark curled hair between her legs sharply visible in the candlelight. She was holding something in her hands. It was a snake fashioned out of gold, long and curved into an
S.
Its scales were meticulously carved, its mouth open with its tongue darting out as if it sensed danger.

She placed it between her legs and drew it slowly between her thighs. Her eyes deigned to meet his. "Come to me," she commanded.

He came.

She held the gold snake up to him. Its luster seemed to grow in intensity, hurting his eyes. He feared the snake.

"Take it," she said.

Trembling, he accepted the carved serpent. It burned his hands. His very soul seemed to gasp at the contact.

"An evil man has already come," she purred. Her voice licked him with promise. "The Prince of Death has come.
My
evil man."

He closed his eyes. He understood. "My goddess," he said.

She placed her silky hands on top of his. At her touch, his fear of the snake's power vanished. With a sigh, he snapped the golden serpent in two.

"Yes," she said softly into his ear, filling him with a deep, perverse lust that he realized he had longed for all his life. She had been right: He had no choice. His destiny was to serve her, to drink her magic, to live in spheres high above the scrambling and rutting of common men.

"My Prince of Death. You have the seeds of greatness in you. I will make those seeds bloom, my prince. And you will kill the golden snake for me."

"I will," he promised.

Then she opened to him and wrapped her body around his and, as the bell still faintly tinkled and the air grew heavier with the scents of incense and carnality, she took him into the depths of his own darkness.

BOOK ONE

 

The Coiled Snake

 

 

T
he dock on Pihlaja Island was deserted
, as it always was in Helsinki's black early mornings. The patrolman yawned and checked the luminous face of his wristwatch. It was an hour before dawn. Just another ninety minutes and he would drag his chilled body home and bury it in the warmth of his wife.

He heard a faint scratching sound behind him and he wheeled, his right hand slapping down toward his heavy leather police holster, but then he relaxed as he saw a solitary wharf rat running down the middle of the wooden dock.

He smiled grimly, faintly embarrassed at his display of nerves. The
punkkarit
, the local hoodlums, frightened everybody. Each day the newspapers carried stories of their plundering raids, and all the members of the police's tiny dock squad had been warned to be extra watchful while on duty. Moored ships could be a paradise for vandals and burglars.

The patrolman's footfalls echoed heavily along the bleak wharf. His breath blew out in clouds. Soon all the harbors in the Gulf of Finland would be closed with the first ice. In the distance a sleeping tanker sent tubes of yellow light over the black gulf. Nearer, tied up to the condemned section of wharf where the policeman walked, another vessel rocked silently on the water. It was a fishing boat, sizable but ancient, a black, empty hulk without even an identifying name on its transom. He walked toward it. The boat was obviously abandoned, although he had never seen it before.

Suddenly, behind him, the numberless rats housed in the decayed pier house set up an indignant chatter and scattered in all directions. The policeman turned toward the source of the noise, a thin line of sweat rising across his forehead.
Punkkarit
? Here? He pulled his night stick out of his belt as he approached the low stone building.

But it wasn't the kids with their Mohawk haircuts and snapping switchblades. He cursed softly and smiled with relief at the dim figure crouched against the crumbling facade of the pier house. The man was asleep. He was dressed in a ragged sailor's jacket and a pair of filthy trousers. Under his head was a tattered old duffel, which the man used as a pillow.

"Hey, what's this?" the officer said in Finnish, prodding the man with his toe. The vagabond snorted awake and strained to focus his eyes on the policeman. "Get moving. You can't sleep here."

He repeated the command in Swedish. The man stirred slowly. "And take your things. You won't be coming back." He pointed at the duffel with his night stick.

The derelict obeyed. He brought himself to his feet shakily. Then, shivering, he dragged the ragged canvas bag away from the wall. He looked up at the officer with watery eyes.

"Well, go on," the policeman said, gesturing with his head toward the end of the dock. The man padded away softly, his back bent. The officer watched him go, then walked back to the black boat.

He stepped carefully over its mooring lines and scanned the vessel with his flashlight. Over the place where the ship's name normally would have been, a black-painted board hung suspended from two hooks.

That was odd, he thought. It was as if someone had purposely concealed the identity of the old hulk. He leaned over the pier, reached out with his stick, and lifted the board. For a moment the name
Kronen
gleamed in white letters against the black crupper. The policeman straightened and let the board fall back against the vessel with a slap. He moved farther along the pier, the beam from the flashlight moving in a straight line along the length of the craft. He stopped, looked at the boat again, and shook his head in puzzlement. Why would anyone try to conceal the name of a boat? Unless the boat had been stolen.

He reached behind him and pulled his small mobile radio from the leather holder on his belt. Just before he depressed the button, his neck snapped backward and his spine lurched with a painful blow from the rear. The flashlight hurtled out of his hand into the water below, and the radio dropped onto the wooden dock with a muffled thud.

"What... what..." the policeman groaned, buckling to his knees.

He twisted his head and saw the hobo standing above him, looking completely different from the boozy tramp he had chased from the dock. The man he saw now was as blankly efficient as a machine, avoiding the policeman's eyes as he yanked him to his feet.

"No, please," the policeman began. But by then the knife in the hobo's hand was already singing upward.

The officer gasped once, his eyes bulging in shock as the blade tore into the left side of his throat and sliced up to his right ear. His hands struck out, jerking wildly, as if they had been electrified. His feet skidded. A stream of bubbling blood hissed out from his neck, forming a cloud of vapor in the cold air as it shot forward in an arc. His head fell back on the hobo's shoulder.