Rogue Angel 53: Bathed in Blood (21 page)

37

Nové Mesto Hospital

Annja awoke to find herself lying in a bed surrounded by medical equipment and monitoring devices. The steady hiss of a pump sounded from somewhere nearby and her heart jack-hammered into overtime as Annja’s still-fuzzy brain told her she was back in the medical ward under Stone’s control.

With her mind screaming at her to get up and get out, Annja tried to do just that, only to discover that her wrists and ankles were secured to the bed with wide leather restraints.

A high-pitched keening noise filled her ears as she fought against the restraints, pulling and tugging and pushing to no avail. In some distant part of her mind she realized that she was the one making that sound, but she was unable to bring herself back from the brink as her fear began to overwhelm her...

“Hey, hey! Easy!” The voice cut through her fear like a lighthouse in heavy fog, and she looked up to see Detective Tamás entering the room, his hands up in the universal gesture for her to calm down.

“You’re in a hospital in Nové Mesto. You’re safe,” he said, coming toward her. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“If I’m safe, why am I strapped down?” she asked, pulling on the restraints that held her wrists in place. Her voice was calm, but she knew she was close to the breaking point. All she had was Tamás’s word that she wasn’t back in that facility under Stone’s control, and she wasn’t sure she could trust him. Not entirely anyway.

Sensing her distress, Tamás moved immediately to her side and began undoing the strap that held her arm to the bed. “The restraints were for your own safety. The antitoxin they gave you causes significant muscles spasms. They didn’t want you to injure yourself if you started flailing about.”

Once he’d freed one arm, he moved around to the other side and released the other, then started working on the restraints around her ankles.

Annja watched him for a moment and then asked, “Do you believe me now?”

“Yes. And the next time you show up in my office with some fanciful tale for me to consider, I promise I won’t simply dismiss it out of hand. I’m sorry I doubted you and Havel. If I hadn’t, some lives might have been saved.”

Annja shrugged; frankly, she probably would have doubted her story, too, if she’d been in his position.

Tamás went on, “Dr. Owens started talking the minute we brought him into the interrogation room and hasn’t shut up since. He gave us directions to the facility, and we sent in a team about six hours ago to round up anyone inside. My men are interrogating them as we speak.”

Annja didn’t care about the lab workers; she had a far more important issue on her mind. “And the women?” she asked. “Did you get the women out?”

The detective nodded, but there was no joy in his voice as he said, “Yes, but the prognosis isn’t very good for the majority of them. They’ve had their blood drained so many times it’s a wonder any of them are still alive.”

“What about Csilla? How is she?”

Tamás didn’t say anything, just shook his head. She clenched her jaw against the rising tide of emotion. She’d tried so hard to save that woman, and now she didn’t know whether to hit something or cry.

The detective didn’t miss her reaction to the news. “If it makes you feel any better, we’ve recovered enough evidence to damn Officer Radecki twenty times over. Had he lived, he never would have seen the outside of a jail cell again.”

Annja already knew that. After what he’d done, she would have made sure of it.

A sudden thought occurred to her.

“What happened to Stone?

Tamás glanced away. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I hit her with at least one, maybe two shots and then watched as she went out that window. No one should have been able to survive a fall like that. And yet, by the time I finished getting you the medical attention you needed and made my way around the tower to where she’d fallen, there was no sign of her.”

Tamás turned to look at her, and Annja could see the confusion on his face, plain as day.

“How does a woman who’s injured like that just get up and walk away?”

“Maybe she didn’t,” Annja said. “Maybe someone else spirited away her body.” She didn’t believe that was what happened, not by a long shot, but Tamás might. It was, after all, the most logical explanation.

But Tamás was already shaking his head. “I had the place cordoned off completely. No one but law enforcement personnel were allowed on-site and then only with my say-so. No one could have gotten her body out of there without being seen.”

Annja saw the hole in his argument and used it to her advantage.

“But we already know Radecki was dirty. Is it such a stretch to think that he had help? That someone else on the force was working with him?”

It wasn’t, not really, and it didn’t take long for Tamás to acknowledge that. The idea actually seemed to energize him, and it wasn’t long before he took his leave so he could get back to the investigation, saying he would check in with her later.

Annja didn’t blame him; for someone with a policeman’s mind, the intricacies involved in this case would be practically irresistible.

After Tamás left, Annja sat looking out the window, watching the sun sink behind the hills west of the city, and thought about the fact that she’d lied to the detective.

She did know what had happened to Stone.

Stone’s body hadn’t been spirited away by another person. In fact, Annja would bet that Stone hadn’t died of her injuries at all.
Stone had impaled herself on Annja’s blade, and Annja had watched the resulting gash heal right before her eyes in a matter of seconds.

So was it such a stretch to think that Stone had used that same ability to heal whatever injuries she’d sustained in the fall and had simply gotten up and walked away on her own?

Annja didn’t think it was.

Which meant Stone was still out there.

Somewhere.

Annja didn’t doubt that she’d see Stone again. The woman didn’t seem to be the type to leave loose ends lying around.

She’d lay low for a while, waiting for things to cool down as the authorities were distracted by other, more recent incidents, and then she would make her move.

Except this time, Annja would be there to stop her.

The broadsword once carried by Joan of Arc flashed briefly into existence and then disappeared again.

Puncture wounds were one thing, Annja thought. But Stone might not find it so easy to heal if her head were separated from her body.

The next time Stone showed up, Annja would be ready.

38

Three weeks later...

“If you would follow me, please.”

The hard-looking man who’d been waiting for her at the Prague train station didn’t say anything more as he turned and made his way down the hall. Stone didn’t mind; she wasn’t much in the mood for conversation anyway, at least not with the likes of him. She rose from her chair and followed, her thoughts on the conversation to come.

She’d never met her mysterious benefactor, and she could feel her heart unexpectedly racing as the moment of doing so drew closer with every step she took. She’d originally been approached through a mutual third party, Simon Kovács, and it had been hard to argue with both the freedom and the money she’d been offered. The project had been directly in line with what she’d already been working on, and she recognized the brilliance of the suggested line of inquiry almost immediately. She might not have been privy to her employer’s identity, but that was a small price to pay to be afforded veritable free rein to pursue her research the way it needed to be pursued.

She’d sent the weekly video reports to Kovács and occasionally received an email in reply suggesting certain courses of action or methods of approach. She’d taken those in stride, understanding that operating in such a fashion was a requirement of the work they were doing. They were on the cutting edge of science, and sometimes that meant pushing past the ethical boundaries society had erected around such endeavors. Stone had expected some success, yes, but she never would have imagined things would turn out the way they had. She supposed all of the scientific greats—from Copernicus to Watson and Frick—must have felt the way she did now at some point or another, that giddy sensation that went along with victory when it was finally pulled from the towering piles of previous defeats.

Granted, the past three weeks had been difficult. Those first few hours spent crawling through the underbrush, dragging her broken legs behind her while trying to stop the flow of blood from the bullet wound in her chest, had nearly proved to be too much for her. She’d found a cavity in the rocks large enough to fit her body inside and had lain there in the dirt for the hour it took the prions to knit her tissue and bones back together again.

Escaping under the cover of darkness, Stone had made her way to Budapest, where she’d called the emergency number she’d been told to memorize at the start of her employment. Two hours later she’d boarded a black helicopter with a dragon logo on the nose and was flown to a remote estate outside of Vienna, with instructions to stay there until called for. The estate had been fully stocked with food and liquor, and she’d enjoyed her time there, hidden away from the world and the events unfolding in Nové Mesto.

Until this morning, when she’d been summoned to Prague.

They reached the end of the hall and a set of double doors. Her minder knocked once, then opened the door.

“He’s waiting for you inside.”

“Thank you,” she said, nodding, and then walked past him and into the room beyond.

It was a lavish study, furnished in dark woods and leather but with a touch of modern styling that helped it rise above the banal.

A man stepped out from behind the massive granite desk in the corner of the room and came toward her, his hand extended in greeting.

“Dr. Stone, a pleasure to meet you at last. My name’s Garin Braden.”

Her host was a tall, athletic man with long dark hair, a goatee and dark eyes that shone with confidence. She found herself attracted to him immediately, a response that was entirely unlike her, and she was momentarily nonplussed.

“The, ah, pleasure is all mine, Mr. Braden.”

He smiled as he shook her hand. “Please, Garin is fine.”

He led her over to a leather chair pulled up in front of his desk and indicated that she should sit, before resuming his seat on the other side.

Braden wasted no time getting down to business. “I understand the project has undergone a setback.”

Stone flushed; she wasn’t used to having her failures talked about so openly.

“Yes, that’s true,” she replied, covering her discomfort with studied nonchalance, “but it’s nothing more than a minor inconvenience.”

Braden raised an eyebrow. “You call the loss of a five-million-dollar facility and all the staff a minor inconvenience? How...interesting.”

Stone knew she was right and pushed ahead. “We could lose ten such facilities and still be ahead of the game.” She held up the small leather case she carried. “All the data was pulled from the computers before the authorities arrived, and it’s stored right here on this drive. We can start fresh anywhere you want and at any time. I assure you, the money we’ll earn from this project will buy another such facility ten times over.”

“I see. Mr. Kovács has kept me informed of your progress, but I’m not entirely sure what happened three weeks ago. Perhaps you could bring me up to speed?”

She sighed. “A woman managed to disrupt our operation unexpectedly. I was able to save the research from falling into the wrong hands, however, so we can move forward again as soon as you give the word.”

Braden continued gazing at her steadily as he asked, “Does this woman have a name?”

Stone hesitated. She had the sudden sense that she should tread carefully, but she had no idea why. At last, she said, “Her name is Annja Creed.”

“Is? I take it she has yet to be dealt with?”

“Yes, but it’s only a matter of time. Every loose end will be taken care of.”

Her host nodded. “As they should be. Tell me, what of the research? It has been several weeks since your last report to Mr. Kovács.”

Stone smiled. “Let me show you what we’ve accomplished.”

She reached across the desk and picked up the stiletto-like letter opener lying there. Braden didn’t say anything as she pulled up one sleeve and slashed the blade across the outside of her forearm. Blood welled up in a thin line.

“Watch,” Stone said.

Braden looked on noncommittally as first the blood stopped and then the cut itself closed right before their eyes.

“My healing ability is growing more powerful every day. I’ve healed broken bones, punctures, even a bullet wound.”

“Have you now? And all that’s a result of those tiny little prions floating through your veins?”

She leaned forward, eager to share her success. “Yes! I’m just days away from creating a synthesized version of it, as well. We’ve been giving our clients a harvested version from the blood of the living, but without continued injections the prions...die off, for lack of better terminology. But with a synthetic version, we can keep them in place indefinitely.”

Stone’s face was flushed with excitement as she said, “Think of it! We’re talking virtual immortality here!”

Braden smiled. “I’d say that calls for a drink, don’t you?”

Before she could answer, he rose from behind the desk and moved over to the drink cart standing against one wall. “Brandy all right?” he asked over one shoulder as he pulled out two snifter glasses.

“Yes, that would be just fine.”

She could hear him making the drinks—the sound of ice dropping into the glass followed by the soft gurgle of the pouring liquid—but when he turned around he only had one glass in hand.

“Actually, I much prefer whiskey,” he said, taking a sip, “and since I’m drinking alone I might as well indulge.”

Her mind was still trying to process what he’d said when he brought his other hand up, and Stone found herself staring down the barrel of a handgun.

“What are...?”

That was all she managed to get out before the sound of the gun filled the room and she knew no more.

* * *

G
ARIN
REMAINED
WHERE
he was, though he did lower the gun. He gazed curiously at the body across the floor from him, paying particular attention to the bullet hole in the center of the woman’s forehead as he calmly sipped his drink.

A thin line of blood slipped down the flesh of her face, but that was the only sign of activity he could see, even after fifteen minutes of waiting.

He sighed.

Apparently she hadn’t been as close to virtual immortality as she’d thought.

The room was filled with the smell of cordite and bodily waste. The rug behind Stone’s chair was now littered with blood, bone and brain matter. Garin hardly noticed any of it. After living for six hundred years, the sight and stink of death had become almost commonplace.

The Báthory project had been a long shot from the start. He’d heard about Stone’s research and had decided to bankroll her efforts in the event that her discoveries might shed some light on his own longevity. He’d even suspected that the bloodline she’d been tracing might come full circle; he’d sown his oats far and wide in those early years, and it wasn’t a stretch to think Stone might have confused a German bloodline for a Hungarian one. But none of that mattered in light of what she’d actually achieved.

There was no way the fools of this day and age were ready for something so powerful. Not by a long shot.

And Kovács... When Garin had learned that his executive director was concealing Stone’s more brutal methods, he’d brought the man in for a final meeting before permanently ending their relationship.

He put down his now-empty glass and walked over to the body. Stone’s hand had clenched at the moment of death, and he had to pry the leather case containing the hard drive from her grip. Straightening, he leaned over his desk and pressed a button on the intercom. A moment later there was a discreet knock on his door.

“Come.”

His man, Griggs, stepped inside the room.

“Sir?”

Garin gestured at the mess in the chair across from him. “Ms. Stone’s appointment is over. Get a team in here to see her out and clean the place up.”

Griggs didn’t blink an eye; he’d no doubt heard the gunshot and was the last man who would question his employer’s actions.

That was one of the things Braden appreciated in a man like Griggs—he knew his place in the food chain, and his discretion was absolute.

“We’re headed back to Munich. How soon can the chopper be ready?”

“I can have it warmed up on the pad in ten minutes.”

“Excellent.”

He glanced at the body one more time and nearly laughed. Stone had probably gone to her death thinking she’d been executed for her loss of the research facility, but the actual reason was much simpler than that.

She’d threatened Annja, and that was something Garin did not tolerate unless he was the one doing it.

Not that Annja couldn’t have handled the woman on her own, but then again, it was the principle of the matter.

He headed for the door, the leather case holding the extent of Stone’s research clasped firmly in one hand.

* * * * *