In the jungle beyond, Vassily’s followers slipped silently to the ground from their places in the trees, like ghosts emerging from the darkness. Vassily gestured at them with his staff, and they lowered the skull masks over their faces.
The interlopers had destroyed a holy site, surely a tomb of their ancestors. Just as surely, they had found and taken the gemstone that he as the high priest of Ulikummis had vowed to find himself. The time for merely watching and following was over. He would make them pay for the affronts they had committed. Then he would locate the second and third Eyes of Teshub, secure the Spearhead and use it to wipe the followers of all false gods from the face of the earth.
Vassily motioned to his followers, and together they disappeared into the jungle.
Chapter 9
A heavy, warm rain had begun to fall in sheets by the time Grissom’s men marched Gabriel and the others out of the jungle and onto the road. Noboru’s jeep stood wet and muddy where they’d left it. Parked right beside it was Grissom’s much larger one, military-style with three rows of seats. Gabriel, Joyce and Noboru were shoved into Grissom’s jeep, Gabriel and Joyce in the middle, and Noboru in the back with two of Grissom’s men. Grissom took the wheel, and Julian sat in the passenger seat. The other two men got into Noboru’s jeep.
The engines roared to life and the jeeps pulled out. The bumpy, unpaved road jostled Gabriel and Joyce into each other. The ropes around his wrists bit into his skin. The rain soaked through his clothes.
Joyce shook a wet strand of hair out of her face and shouted over the downpour, “Where are you taking us?”
Grissom smiled at her in the rearview mirror. “Patience, Ms. Wingard. You’ll find out soon enough.”
Julian glanced into the rearview too. Gabriel stared at him in the reflection, not breaking eye contact. Julian’s gaze returned to the road, then flitted back to the mirror a moment later. Gabriel didn’t blink. Memories of Julian pistol-whipping him back at the Discoverers League and stealing the Death’s Head Key replayed in his head and it must have shown in his eyes, since Julian looked away quickly.
Joyce leaned against him, her sopping wet hair falling in thick ropes across her face. “I’m sorry you got involved in all this,” she said.
“Funny,” he replied. “That’s usually my line.”
She leaned closer until a wet strand of hair touched his cheek, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “If we get out of this—”
“We will,” he said. “I just need to think.”
“If we get out of this,” she continued, her voice insistent, “we can’t let Grissom keep the Star. We can’t let him find the other two Eyes. Whatever it is they activate, what ever the Spearhead turns out to be…it would definitely be a weapon in his hands.”
Gabriel thought of Sargonia, a city of ash and cinders and glass after the Spearhead had been turned on it.
Joyce went on, “If it comes down to it, if you have to choose between the Star or me…”
“It won’t come to that,” he said.
“Promise me if you have to make a choice you’ll take the Star and run. Leave me behind if you have to, just keep it out of his hands.”
“It won’t come to that,” Gabriel repeated.
“Goddamn it, promise me.”
“Joyce—”
She stared at him, her mouth a tight line. Rainwater dripped from her nose and chin.
“Okay,” Gabriel said. “I promise.”
“Because it’s only fair you know what I’ll do if I’m faced with the same decision,” she said. Her expression didn’t change. He had to admit, she was tougher than he’d given her credit for. Looking in her ice blue eyes, he had no doubt she’d leave him behind if it meant getting the Star away from Grissom.
The jeeps turned off the road and barreled along a narrow stretch of dirt that cut through the foliage. Eventually the leaves and branches around them thinned and parted, revealing a campsite filled with wide canvas tents. More jeeps were parked around the camp, and men dressed in jungle camo busily passed in and out of the tents. Gabriel counted at least a dozen of them, with god knew how many more out of sight. Who knew how long Grissom had been on the trail of the Spearhead, but he’d amassed a small army along the way.
The jeep stopped suddenly, and Gabriel lurched forward, banging his chest against the front seat. Grissom killed the engine and jumped out of the jeep. His men dragged Gabriel, Joyce and Noboru out of the vehicle and marched them into the nearest tent. Three chairs had been set up in the center and a folding table stood to one side, a small, rectangular wooden box atop it. They were forced to sit and the ropes around their wrists were replaced with new bindings that secured their arms to the chair backs. Gabriel was seated in the middle chair, with Joyce on his left and Noboru on his right.
The tent flap opened, and Grissom entered. Rainwater dripped off the wide brim of his hat. He had a white towel draped over his shoulder. He nodded to his men. They exited the tent, except for one who stayed inside by the flap, one hand on the butt of his holstered gun.
“Well,” Grissom said, “I must say, this is better than I could have hoped for.” He took off his hat and shook the water from it onto the ground. He pulled the towel off his shoulder and dried his face and hair.
“Why are we here?” Gabriel demanded. “You’ve already got the Star of Arnuwanda.”
“Indeed I do, but what I don’t have, Mr. Hunt, is an understanding of it. Not yet. We have a copy of Arnuwanda’s map, but without knowing how to use the Star to read it, it’s merely a curious historical document. Yet in your hands the map and the Star together somehow led you to the crypt in the jungle. What I want to know is how.” He placed the hat back on his head.
Gabriel glared at him and kept his mouth shut. Grissom looked at Joyce and then Noboru. After a moment, he nodded solemnly. “You’re reluctant to tell me. That’s understandable. I haven’t been the most pleasant host.” He folded the towel carefully, and put it down on the table beside the wooden box. He opened the box, pulled out a long object wrapped in a thick purple cloth and began to unwrap it. “But let me assure you, I can be even less pleasant.”
Grissom lifted a dagger out of the cloth. He held it up so that the light from the generator-fed lamp in the corner glinted off the edges of the long, sharp blade. The handle was made of ivory, a curling dragon carved along the hilt from the pommel to the crossguard. “Thousands of years ago, the Chinese of the Shang and Zhou dynasties sacrificed young men and women to the gods of their rivers. They did this to prevent flooding, and to ensure the supply of fish continued for another year. A government minister named Ximen Bao put an end to the practice a few centuries later, but not before that famous Chinese ingenuity took hold. They liked to put their sacrifices in the rivers bleeding copiously, you see, and they needed a device to speed the process of preparing them.” He touched a hidden button in the dragon’s eye, and two additional blades sprang out of the handle alongside the first. He crossed to Gabriel’s chair. “Of course, this isn’t an original. They only had bronze to work with back then. But I do so like the design, don’t you? It’s far more of a precision instrument than it appears.”
He touched the tips of the blades to Gabriel’s face. Gabriel fought the urge to flinch as they neared his eye. The sharp metal slid along his skin, finally stopping when Grissom reached the stitches on his cheek. “I see my son was quite vehement in retrieving the Death’s Head Key from you, Mr. Hunt. He’s a good boy, but he doesn’t always know when to stop. Doesn’t know how much is too much. Perhaps he gets that from me.” Grissom flicked his wrist suddenly, and the tip of the central blade cut through a stitch. Gabriel clenched his jaw as a drop of blood rolled down his cheek. “We can both be quite persistent. Neither of us lets people stand in the way of our goals. Like father, like son. It’s best when things match, don’t you think? The important things, anyway.” He moved the knife to Gabriel’s other cheek and flicked it again, opening a second wound to mirror the first. “Tell me how the Star is used.”