Russell Blake - The Goddess Legacy

The column stopped before him, and the leader looked him in the eyes, chilling his blood. The youth was looking into the face of hell — he knew then that the whispered rumors of timeless evil were no exaggeration. The man’s distorted grimace, the scars where his lips and tongue had been seared away with a glowing brand upon childhood initiation into the cult, the teeth honed to spikes — all were worse than the legends, as was the reek wafting from him as he leaned forward and hissed at the youth like a snake, unable to speak or form words, his dark goddess’s name a hoarse moan when mangled in atonal chant. His hair and beard were threaded with long strips of dry human skin, and a necklace of finger bones and desiccated ears hung low over the man’s bare chest smeared with ash and tattooed with forbidden occult talismans.

These were the infamous descendants of the Thuggee, the murderous cult that had preyed on India for centuries before supposedly being eradicated by the British, from which the English term thug had been derived. Most of the Thuggee had been opportunistic robbers, who would infiltrate caravans as innocent travelers, and once having earned their trust, would turn on them, strangling them and stealing their riches. But this sect was the worst of the worst, an extremist offshoot that had survived in the remotest reaches of the country, whose worship of the goddess of destruction was the stuff of whispered infamy and whose practices were abominations — cannibalism, human sacrifice, necrophilia… every imaginable desecration, including living in burial grounds and smearing themselves with excrement and the rotting flesh of the dead.

The death cult leader turned to his followers, who resumed their chant, an unholy keening from mutilated tongues. The tempo accelerated as the dark priest joined in, and when he spun back to the youth, he was clutching a wickedly curved blade with archaic symbols etched into the gleaming metal.

The youth’s determination to meet his end with dignity gave way to an agonized scream as the leader drove the blade into his abdomen and sliced upward, disemboweling him as another of the murderous clan slipped behind him. The sharp bite of wire burned like liquid fire against the youth’s throat, and then everything went mercifully black as it bit through his larynx and carotid artery, terminating the flow of oxygen to his brain.

The first part of the ceremony completed with the youth’s murder, the cult members lit torches and pounded drums in preparation for the next horrific phase — one that would extend long into the night, culminating in the youth’s remains roasted to ashes over the fire and his skeleton discarded in a massive pit with thousands of other unfortunates. Only then would the cult return to its caves along the rim of the boneyard, satiated until the next offering to the goddess of destruction, who required regular grisly tribute as her due.

Drake elbowed Spencer as the SUV rolled to a stop at the end of a dirt road. In front of them was a houseboat, one of a dozen moored to the riverbank, its hull swaying slightly to the tug of the river’s current. The Frenchman killed the engine and opened his door.

“This is it,” he said. “Everybody out.”

The gunman led them up a rickety gangplank to the houseboat entrance while the driver stood by the SUV and lit a cigarette, checking his watch after blowing a plume of gray at a sliver of moon. The warm air was redolent of decay; the river’s brown rush frothed with diluted toxicity from factories upstream.

The gunman swung open the front door and switched on the lights, and Drake entered behind him with Allie’s bag. She followed him in, trailed by Spencer, who looked worse for wear from having been assaulted by the hostel staff. The gunman turned on a wall air conditioner and then sat in an easy chair facing a moldy couch, an expectant expression in place. Spencer sat on a barstool by the kitchen, and Drake and Allie took the couch, facing their host, who sat forward with his fingers steepled.

“All right. You have questions,” he said. “Might as well get them out of the way.”

Spencer cleared his throat. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Casey Reynolds. I’m American.”

“Why are you helping us?” Allie asked.

“That’s complicated.”

“Try us,” Drake said.

“I’m with the DOD, the Department of Defense. With its military intelligence agency, more precisely — the DIA. You landed on my radar when your friend Carson was killed.” He paused. “I was assigned, among other things, to keep an eye on him.”

“Why?” Spencer asked.

“He’d downloaded a lot of imagery on an area of the country that’s of strategic interest to us. His inquiries tripped some alarms. I’m not sure exactly why, but we were chartered with finding out everything we could about what he’d discovered.”

“And?”

“He was killed before we learned a whole lot.”

Spencer’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not the whole story, is it? Doesn’t explain why you’d risk breaking me out of the hotel and being snagged by the cops.”

Reynolds sighed. “Two days ago, my agent went missing in the area Carson was researching. He’d gone there to nose around, see what he could learn on the ground after we picked up some suspicious chatter. He dropped off the game board and hasn’t been heard from since. His disappearance has to be connected with Carson — hours after my man went dark, Carson shows up on a slab in the Subzi Mandi morgue. That’s no coincidence.” He looked hard at Spencer. “You had a two-hour dinner meeting with him after you flew to India. Which makes you the last person to have seen him alive. I’m guessing you didn’t get on a plane to broaden your cultural horizons, am I right?”

Spencer didn’t say anything.

“Look,” Reynolds continued. “We know he was after some kind of treasure. That’s not a secret.”

“How do you know that?” Drake asked.

“The NSA. We have everything he downloaded.”

“Why is the DOD interested in lost treasure?” Spencer snapped.

“The truth is I’m not completely sure why we were ordered to put Carson under surveillance. We work on a need-to-know basis, and apparently I don’t need to know that. Only to watch him and report back to my superiors.”

“Back to why you helped us escape…” began Allie.

“I’m stationed in New Delhi. A desk officer, if you like. So I can’t go investigate what happened to my agent or follow up on what Carson was looking for in person.” Reynolds paused. “But you can.”

“Wait. The DOD can’t investigate the loss of one of its own men? That doesn’t make any sense,” Drake said.

“I already ran it up the flagpole and was ordered to stand down and let my superiors handle it. But I don’t have confidence it’s a priority or that they can do much. So I need some unofficial help from someone deniable.”

“You want us to see if we can find your man?”

Reynolds nodded. “More that I want you to finish the job Carson started. Whatever he was onto, it was worth killing him to keep quiet. I’m afraid that’s also what happened to my agent. If I’m right, that changes everything. People don’t murder for nothing.”

Drake shook his head. “You want us to put ourselves in danger? For what? Why would we continue working on something that people are being killed over? Carson was decapitated. What’s the most appealing part about that?”

“Do you know much about how Indian law works?” Reynolds asked quietly.

Drake started to splutter a denial, and Spencer cut in. “What’s your point?”

“Here’s the deal,” Reynolds said, turning to Spencer. “Your friend aided a homicide suspect to evade the police. That’s a felony. And you, Spencer, are wanted for Carson’s murder, and from what I hear, the cops are anxious to put you away. They have your papers, so you can’t escape. The short version is you’re both screwed.”