Nigel Bennett & P. N. Elrod - d'Orleans 3 - Siege Perilous

- Chapter 1

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Chapter One

Chichén Itzá, Winter, the Present

Sharon Geary crept unsteadily up two dozen of the ninety steps leading to the top of El Castillo, her

supposedly fit and toned muscles already cramping from monotonous effort, her lungs fighting for every

breath of the thick, still air.

Something doesn't want me here, she thought.

Apart from supernatural factors, she considered the supreme lack of wisdom in scaling a pyramid at any

time, but particularly now, in the dead of night.

Not my choice. His.

She'd lost sight of Neal Rivers hours ago when the sun was strong, while tourists swarmed, oblivious to

his threat beneath its glare. No matter. She knew he was not likely to leave until he'd accomplished his

errand.

Errand, indeed. She repressed a snort, using the energy to haul up another few steps, legs pushing, arms

pulling. God, but the angle was steep, and you didn't dare look down or the sharp pitch would make you

dizzy. You didn't dare look out across the vast esplanade below or the height would . . .

Shouldn't think too much. Shouldn't think about it at all.

She hated heights. Airplanes were not a problem, and just as well, but to be on something tall that was so

solidly connected to the ground gave her a sick-making sight line straight to disaster. Better not to look.

Sharon paused to rest, reminding herself that thousands of sightseers made this climb and were no worse

for the wear. And long before their chattering, guidebook-oriented, camera-toting modern-times

invasion the ancient priests of the Mayans had done exactly the same. The show-off buggers had

probably clambered the harsh steps at all hours of the day or night, nimble as mountain goats. Well, if

they could do it—

Thirty-eight, thirty-nine . . .

She perversely counted steps. It both distracted and annoyed her, ideal factors to keep her moving and

from wondering too much about what awaited at the top.

Oh, but wonderful old Stonehenge was a much easier tour. Flat. Not as exhausting, not nearly as perilous.

Well . . . not precisely. That had been a different kind of peril, more hidden than the obvious threat here

of taking a bone-breaking tumble. When she'd seen Rivers' work at the Henge, seen what he'd done to it,

what he'd left of it, the physical risk she courted now was negligible. Compared to some things, it was

wholly preferable.

She whooped in a viscous draught of the heavy air and gained another few feet. God, it was like moving

against the wind, only there was none stirring to cool her. The stones were still warm from the day's sun,

the heat working through her bare hands into her arms, weighing them down. Sharon ignored the added

burden and the sweat pouring from her and kept going, up and up and up.

Forty-four, forty-five . . . there. The halfway point, that wasn't so bad. People handed over fortunes to

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posh gyms to get this sort of workout. Wasn't she the lucky one?

Forty-six, forty-seven. No reason to turn back; she'd finish it out for sure now. Have a little rest at the

top, find out how and why the bastard does it, but above all stop him. Oh—very important—try to forget

about the increasing distance to the ground. What was it to the top? Seventy-five or eighty feet? That

wasn't much, no, not when one was inside a building. Outside it's a whole different perception of vertical

distance. And was it the actual height of the structure or the measure of the length of the steps set into its

slanted sides? The guide books she read on the plane flight from London hadn't been consistent, nor had

they mentioned just how difficult a climb it would be.

But they all agreed it was ninety steps times four sides, with the top being ninety-one, a nice, tidy Mayan

year. Imagine building this great bloody thing just to keep track of the planting season. Combine the

stifling heat here—even in the winter—with the hangover humidity that was part and parcel with the

surrounding jungle and she wondered why a sane person would want to raise so much as a lean-to in

such a climate, much less anything so massive. Simply climbing the thing was intense, exhausting work,

what must it have been like to build under such conditions? Sharon didn't want to visualize that depth of

detail. Too humbling.

Fifty-seven, fifty-eight. The backs of her thighs and calves burned. Oh, yes, she was now the pride of

every aerobics instructor and film star who had ever put out a keep-fit video. They were always fresh

and bouncy in their skin-tight costumes and perfect hair, not a hint of damp about them. Sharon would

have been driven in disgrace from the video set in her faded black T-shirt, baggy-kneed, sweat-crumpled

army surplus BDU pants and sturdy combat boots. Hardly Hollywood chic, but very practical for

hanging about in jungles, particularly with the green camouflage pattern. The Yanks weren't using this

style anymore for their active military, but it still worked well for concealment. She'd not expected to

have to hide, but had come prepared. Just in case.

Earlier that day she'd drifted in with a tourist group, moving at their speed, but searching for him in the

other groups. Futilely, as it happened.

Neal Rivers—the name by which she knew him; he had others—should have been easy to spot with his

crooked arm and the eye patch, but a number of men matching his general build were clad in loose, long-

sleeved shirts and sunglasses. And hats. Everyone sensible wore a hat against the sun. Certainly she'd

kept hers on to conceal her too-memorable mane of red hair. She'd never had direct contact with him,

but he might wonder at seeing the same tall redhead so soon after his gutting of the Henge.

She'd slipped from the main swarm of vacationers to pick a hiding place within the trees and settled in to

wait for nightfall. If he repeated what he'd done at Salisbury, he would want darkness.

Except for the stifling heat and keeping an eye out for snakes and unfriendly insects, she'd been almost

comfortable with her spare canteens of water and protein bars. The hours until sunset had gone slowly,

but she could be patient for a sufficiently worthwhile goal. From cover she searched the knots of

wandering tourists with her field glasses for a recognizable if unsettling face and form.

And finally spotted him.

He'd been at the northeastern foot of El Castillo, standing disrespectfully close to one of the carved stone

snake heads at the base of the steps. During the equinoxes, when the sun was right, angled shadows cast

from the main body of the pyramid onto the outside wall of the steps created the illusion of the serpent

god's undulating back as it descended from the top. Quite an impressive slow-motion show it was, too;

must have pulled in droves of worshipers, same as today.

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Rivers stood nose-to-snout with Kukulcan's head, almost as though speaking to it, which was ridiculous.

Perhaps he'd made faces. She'd heard that sort of cheek was to be expected from him.

Then he abruptly straightened, turned in her direction, and for a few awful seconds seemed to look

straight down through her field glasses into her soul. At such a distance he couldn't possibly see her, but

it was startling enough to make her jump. By the time she refocused, he'd vanished into the mob and

never showed again for the remainder of the day or during the after-dark light show. Quite inconsiderate

of him to be sure.

No matter. Though he was out of sight, she felt his presence. Very odd, that. This particular quarry was

dangerous, far more so than any other she'd ever gone after, and on levels well beyond the ordinary.

His touch was cold, the only hint of chill possible in this climate, and rather than sensed as a freezing

whisper on her skin, she felt it in her heart and beyond. It went down to the marrow, that feeling. Sharon

took it to be a serious warning and gave it her most strict and unsmiling attention.

She never used to trust in such insubstantialities. That eccentricity began only after the business with

Richard Dun, her one-time friend and lover.

And teacher. In his own way. He'd opened other doors for her besides the one to his bedroom. Not on

purpose, that had happened simply by being with him.

Sixty-five, sixty-six . . . keep going . . .

You'd think there'd be some wind by now. But the night sky was stingy even at this height. Or holding its

breath? She could believe it. In the last few years she'd come to believe in quite a number of extremely

improbable things.

It was all Richard's fault, of course.

Well . . . not completely. He'd been more of a catalyst than an instigator. It was as though contact with

him had awakened a strange insight in her. Sharon had always had intuition a-plenty, combined with

boundless common sense, but nothing like this. It was right out of her gram's stories of the women in

their family having the Sight. The old lady did possess one hell of a sharp shrewdness about people,

though. She'd always been able to tell truth from a lie, know when someone was in pain or happy, and

whether it would be a boy or a girl long before the mother knew she was expecting. Both blessing and

curse, Gram had said, mind how you wear it.

Sharon thought the idea quaint, a way of making an old tale more interesting. What a shock it had been

the day she first noticed auras on people. They were exactly as Gram described, so it wasn't too terribly

frightening. Took a bit of getting used to, that, but Sharon had adapted with curious quickness. It was as

though she'd always held the potential within and only just needed to be reminded to make use of it.

He had brought it out. Unknowingly. Richard. A very pleasant distraction she'd chosen not to linger with

for long. He'd asked her to stay with him having freely confessed—wonder of wonders in a modern

man—that he was in love with her. She believed him, but weeks before their parting she'd determined

she would have to eventually move on.

Sharon tried to let him off as gently as possible, putting on a bravado face mixed with tenderness and

giving him her "itchy feet" speech. Richard wasn't the first man who'd ever wanted to settle down with

her, so the words came easily and smoothly, but with a hollow tone to them. They'd sounded so

painfully brittle and false and overly rehearsed in her own ears. She half expected him to tell her to shut

up and come out with the real explanation, but he'd quietly bowed to her reason to leave. No denials, no

anger, no demands, no insisting that she reconsider, no offers of a home and security and true-blue

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hearts-and-flowers devotion for life . . . just sad disappointment. And acceptance. That was the amazing

part of it. He accepted her decision and off she went.

She'd finally met a man who understood her need for freedom and by the time she comprehended the

rarity of that quality it was too late to go back to him. She boarded the plane and returned to her previous

existence, giving herself a wobbly inner congratulation of having made a successful escape.

A rather narrow escape. He was one hell of a man, after all.

But no regrets she'd told herself. Richard was a warm and happy pause in her life, nothing more. If they

ever met again, they would still be friends, and, if he was still available, perhaps again become lovers.

For a time. Always and only for a time. She neither needed nor desired anything permanent. "Wandering

Star," her Irish gram had pronounced over her more than once, smiling.

It was only after Sharon had left Richard that she came to realize his crashing and unexpected impact on

her life. That little adventure they'd shared had changed her. Seeing auras wasn't the half of it.

After auras on people, she began to see them associated with places. It took a bit of practice and study to

sort out the accumulation of colors, feelings, and even shapes. Some were terrifying, while others were a

delight. That spot in Canterbury Cathedral where Thomas á Becket had been cut down—nasty place, all

muddy black and blood red, but then there was that lovely shining glow around the main altar, as though

in some way they balanced each other out.

So she'd taken to visiting other historical sites, reading the truth of messages absorbed by earth, brick,

stone, and wood, seeing the feelings left behind by thousands of others. She liked the holy sites the best;

it didn't matter what religion, they all had something going for them, like . . . well, like different flavors

of ice cream. She wanted to sample them all.

Then toward dusk only yesterday she'd gone to Stonehenge on a whim. She'd been there before, drinking

gratefully from its energy, and finding comfort in its ancient strength. Having finished up a minor

problem for Lloyd's of London ahead of schedule she could spare the time from her freelancing to loaf.

It was on her route back, so why not? She pulled off the A303 into the car park and walked in with other

late arrivals to the monument, her inner senses open and receptive.

But she'd found something was happening there, a wrong kind of something. The sonorous visual music

coming from the ancient stones competed with a powerful instrument playing determinedly out of tune.

An alien element had been introduced into their chorus that made her skin crawl. She first took it to be a

weather problem, having seen similar disturbances before, but soon concluded this was nothing to do

with the voice of wind and cloud over the land. There was a specific source to the problem, which she

eventually tracked to one of the lingering tourists, a stockily built balding man standing casually next to

a Saracen stone. His hair, combed straight back from his high brow, was shot through with gray and not

a few streaks of pure white, the same as his beard and moustache.

His black eye patch and the scars under it were the most immediately noticeable differences setting him

apart from the crowd. Then she noticed his crooked right arm, as though it had been badly broken and

never properly set. The shape of the twisted bone showed through the sweater he wore.

That's what tripped her memory. She'd never seen him, but knew him from Richard Dun's description.

The man could only be Neal Rivers, professor, an expert on Arthurian legend—the Holy Grail in

particular—and when going by the name of Charon, one of the most successful and deadly assassins on

the planet. He'd spooked even the mostly unflappable Richard, which was saying a lot.

Rivers in person was quite a few steps beyond what she'd heard about him. The impact of his presence

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was extraordinary to her changed senses. He wore human form like a disguise. It concealed the truth

from the unaware. His flesh was a flexible shell, protective coloring allowing him to blend with the rest

of humanity. A hunter herself, she instantly recognized another predator—or as she came to learn—a

predator and parasite in one.

Sharon shut down her Otherside hearing and kept her distance, observing. Now that he had her attention

she noticed small things about his body language, the sort of nuances that set off her internal alarms. She

finally identified them as an absolute and overpowering confidence. Certainly it was attractive, but

somehow askew by a few crucial and creep-making degrees. Richard Dun had a similar eerie confidence

about him, but in a positive sense. This man was his opposite number and into overkill about it.

And sometime or other during her otherwise careful surveillance Neal Rivers vanished.

That nettled her. She was good at trailing people; having a stand-out, oblivious subject giving her the

slip in such a controlled and confined area was unacceptable. He'd not left, of that she was certain.

Visiting hours came to a close, and the tourists were herded out, but if one was clever and quick one

could hide from the caretakers. Sharon avoided them, finding concealment in one of the long ditches

outside the stone circle.

She lay flat and very still, invisible as early winter darkness rolled over the land, and she ruthlessly

ignored a voice inside that said this was a fool's quest. The worst that could happen was to be discovered

by the management; embarrassing, but survivable. Or she might catch pneumonia. Her lumpy bed in the

chalk was damp and icy cold despite her well-insulated clothes. To keep circulation going, she made

scouting forays around the circle, taking it slow, her senses extending to pick up his presence.

But he must have been concealing himself. In more ways than one.

The car park was empty now, but for two vehicles: her own, and what looked to be a nondescript rental.

Perhaps it belonged to a watchman, but she doubted it. She could assume that Rivers was aware another

person might be lurking about.

So why was he at Stonehenge? Playing tourist? Not likely. He couldn't possibly be after the Grail again.

That—according to Richard—was being well looked after in a safe and secret location. If Rivers was on

the trail of some other historical holy object, he was flat out of luck. Decades of archeological

excavations had picked this place clean. The most he could hope for here was a stray bit of pot shard or

perhaps a fragment of deer antler left by the ancient builders. Sharon doubted Rivers would have much

interest in their cast-off tools, which were all over the area. As for the stones, well, they were just too big

for carrying away.

For a bad moment it occurred to Sharon he might be after her, but she dismissed it. Until a few hours

ago she'd no idea herself that she would stop for a visit. He'd already been here, so he couldn't have

followed her. No, this was one of those mad coincidences that sometimes just happen.

Richard Dun did not believe in coincidences, though. In the short space she'd been with him she'd

learned he took such things very seriously, indeed. They were not always portents of grim events, but

they were something requiring a certain amount of consideration depending on their level of intrusion

and probability. The more improbable, the more important they must be, and how much more

improbable could this one get?

I make a casual stopover and run square into a man that several dozen police forces would love to have

chained and gagged in a dungeon, which they would gladly build especially for him. What are the

odds?

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Richard would know the reply to that one. Too bad he wasn't here. He'd said he had certain unfinished

and no doubt fatal business to conclude with Rivers.

Perhaps he would have his chance, if Sharon could find out Rivers' business without getting killed. She

wished she had her Glock with her. The local law was indecently paranoid about allowing honest people

to protect themselves . . .

She froze in midstep, then sank low with only her head above the level of the ditch.

Rivers emerged from his hiding place. He'd been hanging near the stones in the middle of the circle and

appeared now as a shadow moving among them. He swaggered about as though he'd just bought the

place, apparently unconcerned over discovery and eviction.

Then he climbed atop the Altar Stone in the center. Good God, even the most radical of the "Free

Stonehenge" New Agers discouraged that sort of behavior. Not only did it add to the weathering and

wear, but it was bloody disrespectful.

Neal Rivers stood tall on the great block and raised his arms to the night sky. Outlined against its leaden

press she could clearly see the crooked twist of the right one.

But what was he doing?

Belatedly, she turned to her inner sight for an answer. She'd shut it down completely on the off chance

he might be sensitive to it and notice her.

When she opened up, it was almost too much.

Instead of the occasional rush of cars passing on the nearby road she was all but flattened by a terrific

Otherside howling that hit her ears like a basso supremo air-raid siren. It boomed and roared over and

around the whole area of the monument, yet she could see no source. The stones shook from it, and

smoke seemed to rise from them, though they couldn't possibly be on fire. Streamers thick as storm

clouds flowed from their surfaces to rush in a clockwise current around her.

And there were things in that river of darkness.

What she glimpsed she had no description for: swirling shadows and sparks of light and half-perceived

shapes flowing swiftly around and—alarmingly—through her. Some seemed to be human in form,

others were like animals, but they shifted too fast to be identified. She felt that many were harmless

while others were beyond dangerous, both caught up by this strange squall. It was like a rout from a

forest fire, where rabbits and deer fled next to wolves and mountain lions.

A few of the more nightmarish monstrosities, for they did not resemble anything familiar to her, slowed

enough for her Sight to focus on. They seemed to see her in turn. They reminded her of the big predators

in a zoo held safe behind their bars, and all is well until one of them picks you from out of the crowd.

Those all-knowing and hungry golden eyes carry you back to the dangers of the ancient plains, and you

know that your once important strivings in life are about to end, you've just been turned into food.

So it was here. Whatever those things might be, they were not only caught in the maelstrom, but held

back by some barrier yet invisible.

It took an enormous amount of willpower to wrest her awareness from the Otherside gale to look at

Rivers. Only then did she perceive that he was at its center.

He was laughing. She couldn't hear him for the row, but little else could account for his head being

thrown back and his arms spread high and wide as though to receive . . . what?

The chaos menagerie, apparently.

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Sharon gaped as the overwhelming and gigantic flow of raw power whirled around and around to finally

sweep right into his chest.

It did not pass through; it went in and stayed.

He was . . . was feeding on it.

Oh, now that just wasn't right.

She thought she should do something, but didn't know what that could possibly be. Jump up and yell at

him to stop defacing a national monument on the metaphysical level?

And get flattened into jelly. If he could cause this sort of disruption with the enormous primal forces of

this place he could do just exactly that to her. Much as she wanted to stop him, this would have to be a

strictly intel-gathering operation. Watch everything, then get out and decide what to do about it later.

When he was locked up in a cell.

Make that "dungeon." Yes. For people like him a dungeon was just the thing. The only safe place to

contain his threat was yards-thick impersonal stone with bars made from cold iron.

Of course, this assumed Rivers was up to no good, but she knew in her soul that evil was afoot—real

evil—the kind that couldn't be spin-doctored away with lawyer-speak excuses about an abusive

childhood or disadvantaged environment or temporary insanity. This evil was the sickening, deliberately

cruel, self-absorbed, old-fashioned kind that made dedicated atheists cross themselves.

So Sharon kept her head down, waiting out the storm, until the terrific howling diminished and finally

died.

She wasn't used to absolute silence, in either world she walked in. The ordinary Sussex countryside was

mute, with not even the swish of a passing motor to break the hush. She tapped one ear to make sure

she'd not gone deaf and heard the light thump, but nothing else.

The same went for her Otherside hearing. She knew that wasn't right, but just how wrong was it?

Then Rivers crowed, letting rip a shout of triumph and joy mixed with laughter. It was like a drunk

cursing in a church, so loud as to make her wince. She lifted just enough to see.

Sweet heavens, but he was glowing. It was an unhealthy light, though, like something from a fifties

scare-cinema to show radioactivity. He was happy enough about it, positively gloating before he hopped

down from the Altar Stone and went striding off toward the car park. Good. Her cell phone was in her

own vehicle. Once he was gone, she'd start the police to tracing his plate numbers. With any luck they

could nab him before—

She ceased planning as the surrounding devastation gradually impressed itself on her inner eye.

Of course the Henge on this Side was intact. There was damned little that could influence those

monuments into moving.

But the Otherside . . . She blinked, disbelieving.

It was utterly gone. The great stones were crumbled to rubble and dust no more than ankle high, as

though they'd been struck square on with a bomb, lots of bombs—or one really big one. The destruction

was so thorough that she couldn't tell where anything had stood before; she had to superimpose the view

of one world atop the other, and they still didn't match. Everything was gone.

And dead. Whatever life, good, bad, or neutral, had been in the circle was missing. The lights, the

shadows, the movement of existence itself—had been sucked into that . . . thing. Rivers. The disguised

thing in a suit of flesh.

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No number of police would be able to stop him. Rivers wouldn't even be slowed, not with that kind of

power to command. She could make a call, but it would only get people needlessly killed. Her intuition

told her that if he could drain life from a place he could just as easily take it from living beings.

Richard Dun might know how to deal with him on such a level, but for that to happen she'd need

Rivers's location.

As soon as it was safe—a relative term, now—she dashed shakily to her car and followed his rental as it

ran toward London. She kept her distance, but never quite lost sight of his taillights, not that she needed

them. All she had to do was lean into her Sight and there he was blazing away like a Guy Fawkes effigy.

Rivers went straight to Heathrow, which did not bode well. He was apparently booked and all the

arrangements made. He turned in his car, collected a bag from a storage locker, and headed for an

overnight flight with the final destination being Cancún in the Yucatán.

* * *

Seventy-two steps, seventy-thr—oh, hell . . . relax a moment. Her heart was making a good run of it, but

another break wouldn't hurt. If only the air wasn't so souplike in her straining lungs. Good grief, she'd

seen flabby old ladies weighed down by suitcase-sized purses and shopping bags going up this thing at a

faster pace. All she had was a single canteen, a machete strapped to one leg, and the Glock.

What's your problem, girl?

Jet lag, perhaps. After the chaos at Stonehenge she'd hardly paused, booking on the next flight out.

There'd been barely enough time for a hasty stop at an airport shop to snag some necessaries, then pelt

away again. Tight timing and a lot of speeding, but she'd done it, making her plane and arriving in

Cancún only hours behind him.

There'd been no spare moment to phone Richard then. She'd eventually managed that from the plane, but

he'd not been home. This was not the sort of news one could easily leave on an answering machine.

Hallo, love, I've found Charon. He's off to a tropic vacation in Cancún after metaphysically destroying

Stonehenge. Would you mind dropping everything and come lend a hand down here? His aura looks like

a black hole on steroids, so I wouldn't mind the help. You can reach me at this number . . .

What a look she'd gotten from her seatmate. Who had asked to be moved to another part of the plane.

Stuffy cow. No matter, Sharon made herself at home on both seats and tried to sleep.

It hadn't worked. She kept seeing the Henge turned into moonscape. The things that had lived there, that

had given the place its—well—magic, were gone. Were they dead? Could they die? She was very vague

about Otherside life, if that's what it was. Energy, perhaps?

She could use some for herself. The summit of El Castillo seemed miles above her.

But she was used to swift air travel; her body had to be reacting to something other than a different time

zone and latitude. She clung tight to a step, drew a deeper breath than normal, and went still, her eyes

half shut.

It only took a moment to see, then several more to even begin to take in the magnitude of it.

Though the heavy air pressing close upon her was statue-still, on another plane, in that place where she

could see auras, high winds were ripping about the pyramid in a hurricane turmoil the same as before but

on a vastly larger scale. Enormous shapes rode the currents, spinning so quickly she could only see their

trailing shadows. Her imagination supplied images to fill in the blanks, an inhuman eye here, a gaping

mouth there, like a moving Rorschach test constantly turning itself inside out.

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Dear God, what was going on here?

It was growing in power, too. Energies from the other monuments in the area were being drawn in,

stripped violently away from their accustomed place in the universe.

If there was a source for the disturbance it was at the top of El Castillo. She thought she saw a more

stable, slower patch of shadow there, but when she blinked it went away. Rivers? Had to be. He would

have climbed the pyramid from the northeastern side, the only one with the twin serpent heads flanking

the stairs. After all, hadn't he been talking to one of them earlier?

Right. So . . . what were her options?

Ordinary world: Take herself down from here as quickly as possible, get hold of someone in authority

and see about pulling Rivers into custody for trespassing after hours, then fix him in place with the

international warrants for his arrest. She liked the option of putting some distance between them. It made

the bit about possibly being arrested herself seem rather attractive.

Otherside world: She could complete her trip to the top and see what the devil he was up to and this time

stop him. Oh, yes, bags of fun trying that, but after the devastation at Stonehenge she couldn't let him get

away with it again. She had no doubts he intended to commit the same ravaging here. Her instincts told

her he was only just getting warmed up for . . . whatever it was he did, and that would be something

very bad indeed. What next? The Vatican? The Wailing Wall? Ayers Rock? No, that couldn't be allowed.

One thing in her favor—she hoped—was that flesh-suit he wore. Obviously he needed it to function on

this plane, and a body was a body was a body. Vulnerable to damage . . . and death.

Of course the locals here were almost as paranoid about firearms as the place she'd come from. She

never transported a gun on flights anymore, too much trouble and forms and delays and notice. When

needed, it was better to buy one upon arrival, whatever the legality or lack thereof, which she promptly

did. Sharon had a wide experience dealing with all sorts of people on both sides of the law and in

between, and she knew how to ask the right questions in four different languages. Within hours of

reaching Cancún she had a Glock comfortably weighing down the cargo pocket on her right hip, along

with spare magazines of ammunition. For good measure she also purchased a third- or fourth-hand

machete and scabbard, well used, but with a sharp edge and decent weight. It even fit into her backpack

without showing. The shady gentleman she'd bought it from had overcharged her outrageously, but he'd

not asked questions, so she chalked it up to being part of the service. God, but it was good to deal with

professionals on her own level. Almost homey.

Rivers, she had to be honest about it, was very much beyond her in a number of areas, though she still

had surprise on her side.

Maybe.

When he was busy . . . feeding . . . she'd have her opportunity.

First-degree murder the Yanks called it, though she didn't see it that way. The chance had fallen to her to

deal with this threat, and she wasn't the sort to flinch. It was like those times when Gram went into a

"what if" mood. What if you had the chance to shoot Hitler or Stalin before they really hit their stride.

Would you do it?

Not of that generation, Sharon was unsure about either of them because of historical impact factors, but

she had no hesitation over this particular target.

It was that important.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaubla...0Siege%20Perilous%20(.html%20v3.0)/0743488547___1.htm (10 of 19)28-12-2006 13:37:11

Nigel Bennett & P. N. Elrod - d'Orleans 3 - Siege Perilous

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