Alex Archer: Fury's Goddess

A dark goddess. An ancient cult. And a dangerous zealot...

On the outskirts of the recently developed and prosperous city of Hyderabad, India, a new and luxurious housing complex has arisen. But several residents have been found brutally murdered. Some believe the killer is a rogue tiger. Others whisper that it is the work of the servants of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death.

Her feet are barely on Indian soil when archaeologist Annja Creed finds herself swept up in Hyderabad’s modern prosperity. But something about the recent spate of killings seems unusual and Annja begins to dig deep for answers. Instead, she finds herself taken prisoner and held in a maze of ancient caves. She’s being held captive by a cult of thieves who are under the thrall of a charismatic leader.

In only a few short hours, Annja is to be sacrificed—unless she can channel the vengeance of the goddess Kali herself....

There was a sudden explosion of light

The first thing Annja saw after her eyes adjusted was a blue figure emblazoned in front of her. A statue. Annja caught herself as she recognized who it was.

Kali.

The goddess of death.

The statue had four arms, each wielding a different weapon. And the red eyes were supposed to suggest a certain level of intoxication, a bloodlust resulting from one of Kali’s many battles.

Kali was a ferocious deity.

What the hell had Annja stumbled onto here?

The torches that had sprung to life glowed hot, casting long shadows across the chamber, but also giving enough illumination for Annja to finally see the men who held them captive. Her first impression was that there weren’t nearly as many of them as she’d thought there’d been in the darkness. Only a dozen or so. All chanting.

And they looked as ferocious as their goddess Kali. Slowly, each man reached up and undid the length of black cloth that covered their faces. These scarves, knotted at each end, were handled with a degree of reverence Annja found amazing. The captors tucked them into their belts, the two knotted ends dangling over, as if ready to be drawn quickly. Perhaps they were weapons.

Thuggee. The thought struck her hard. Except…

Except that cult was supposed to have been wiped out ages ago.

Fury’s Goddess

Alex Archer

www.mirabooks.co.uk

The Legend

...The English commander took Joan’s sword and raised it high.

The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade. The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd.

Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.

Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn....

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jon Merz for his contribution to this work.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 1

“Maybe it’s a tiger,” Annja Creed said as she perused the latest police reports on her iPad. The translated reports had been emailed over to her as she flew from New York City to India. And she was now looking at grisly pictures of mutilated bodies that had been recovered, some of them partially eaten. The remains of Annja’s in-flight meal were on the tray in front of her. But somehow, the limp turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich on stale wheat bread no longer seemed very appetizing.

If it ever had, Annja thought.

“Don’t tigers tend to eat everything?” Frank asked. “Some of those bodies just look, well, sort of…picked at.”

Annja looked at the big man seated next to her. His innocence seemed to be waning fast. Frank Desalvo was fresh off his stint as an intern at another cable channel and had landed the job of cameraman on this assignment. The program Annja worked on, Chasing History’s Monsters, had snapped Frank up for his keen eye, the producers had said. Annja suspected it was because he wasn’t established enough to command a higher salary.

He was likable enough, even if he still had the arrogance of a young twentysomething. With a mop of black hair and wide brown eyes, his splotchy beard made him look a few years older than he was. Annja figured he wore a beard for that reason.

“Not necessarily, although I’m not exactly an expert on man-eating tigers,” she said. “They may not have been hungry enough to devour the entire body. Or perhaps they were simply defending their territory.”

She continued to scan through the reports. “Whatever the case, the locals are terrified and the police haven’t been able to track or trap the offender.”

“Which makes for great television.”

Annja frowned. “It means more people might lose their lives.”

“Well, sure. But at least it’s nobody we know, right? That makes it easier.”

Annja came across one very gory picture and thrust the iPad in front of Frank. “You think this is any easier for the family of this person?”

Frank blanched visibly. “I guess not.”

“Try to remember that the stories we cover are about people, just the same as you and me. They’re not objects. We can’t disconnect from them. There’s too much of that going on in the world as it is, all right?”

“You’re the boss.”

Annja nodded. “Yes, I am.”

She took a breath and went back to reading. There had been three deaths so far. Two men and a woman. All residents of a new luxury complex on the outskirts of Hyderabad, India’s sixth most populous city.

Annja started surfing the net to find out more about the city she and Frank would be heading into. After several minutes, she started forming a picture of the place in her mind and found herself getting more excited all the time.

Hyderabad was only about five hundred years old, although recent archaeological excavations had uncovered settlements dating back to the Iron Age, around 500 BC.

I would have enjoyed being on those digs, she thought.

Hyderabad enjoyed a hot summer, a very moist monsoon season and a delightful winter between late October and early February. Annja was relieved they were going to be in the city during the winter. She’d had enough of monsoon seasons of late, and a hot summer didn’t appeal much to her, either.

With 3.6 million living in the city or its outskirts, Hyderabad certainly had plenty of potential victims for a rogue tiger to choose from. Except locals had reported hearing something that didn’t sound like a tiger at all, but a mysterious creature that sounded as if it was part cat and part wolf.

The combination had aroused the intense curiosity of Chasing History’s Monsters, and naturally, Annja was dispatched to find out the truth.

But in a city as cosmopolitan as Hyderabad, was there any place a mysterious rampaging creature could hide? Or was it a case of mistaken identity or some psychopath covering his tracks by making his victims appear to have been attacked by a wild animal?

Annja went back to reading while Frank flirted with the flight attendant. Hyderabad’s primary industries were split among real estate, pharmaceuticals, information technology, tourism and filmmaking. She found that last part intriguing. She’d heard of Bollywood before, but Hyderabad apparently had Tollywood, after the major film production complex located at Telugu Cinema. Annja paused. What if someone at Tollywood was getting especially imaginative with the props department?