Читать книгу The Other Crowd - Alex Archer - Страница 11

Daniel had wandered off somewhere. A sweep of the camp’s periphery did not reveal the eccentric plaid-clad Irishman. Wouldn’t a guide have explained the lay of the land to Eric? That he probably shouldn’t wander onto the other camp, which was headed by a pistol-packing director? On the other hand, Annja was already taking sides and she hadn’t begun to learn the real facts. It wasn’t like her to make off-the-cuff judgments.

She insinuated herself between Eric and Michael Slater, and asked Slater, “Now what? Your bloodthirst not satisfied yet?”

Slater stepped back and smirked a slimy grin. Wesley was right; he did look too polished to be an archaeologist. And a bit too much with the angry, tight neck muscles.

“You have no fear, do you,” he countered, “stepping in the middle of a confrontation like that?”

“I doubt it was a mutual confrontation. Are you okay, Eric?”

“No problem,” he said. He clutched the camera to his chest and didn’t look fine. His face was flushed as red as his hair.

“Don’t worry, he’s a trooper,” Slater said. “I was just blustering with him. Seems you’re the lady in charge, so I best direct my concerns toward you. No cameras on the grounds,” Slater barked. “You were not granted permission to film here.”

“Mr. Pierce already gave me approval,” Annja said. “Don’t tell me the two camps are like two separate countries. Do I need a visa to access your dig?”

Slapping a palm over the gun holster, not as a means to pull it on her but perhaps just a security reassurance, Slater shook his head.

“Does Frank Neville have say over Pierce’s camp?” she challenged.

Slater crossed his arms high across his chest. “How do you know Neville?”

“I don’t, but I’m learning more and more each minute. Like the camp was split right after Mr. Neville’s men showed up.” Aware Eric was filming over her shoulder, she raised a hand and blocked his view. “Take a break, Eric. This isn’t necessary for the show.”

“But it shows the volatile mood on the dig,” he protested. “A mood probably created by the presence of the otherworldly.”

Slater’s brows waggled. He smirked and spat to the side. “Lookin’ for faeries, then, are you?”

“No. Erm…” This assignment was so lacking in credibility. But she’d never let that stop her before, or make her look bad. “I’m here to investigate the disappearances.”

“That’d be the fair folk,” Slater offered. “Good luck with that.”

He turned and stomped off, delivering her a smirking sneer over his shoulder.

“Good luck with that,” she mocked at his back. “This is hopeless, Eric. No one will take me seriously if they think I’m tracking faeries.”

“You won’t be saying that when we have them on film. I can feel the eerie mystical presence in the air.” He scanned his camera around to her face.

“Can you?” She sighed. “Good for you, Eric. The land is steeped in the mystical. I guess I need to relax and let it take hold of me, too.”

“Want to do the introduction now?”

“Save it. I want to walk the area with Wesley and see what’s what.”

“I’ll be right behind you.”

“No, you are not my shadow—at least, not right now. You can film the countryside and get some pretty shots of the green rolling hills. The sunset is really enhancing the vivid greens and the sky as amazing. That’ll look great on film. Then skip down to the river and scan for mermaids if the mood takes you. But I don’t need you until I need you. Got that?”

He tilted his head aside from the viewfinder to eye her. “You see? There is an aggressive mood hanging over us all.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it. Annja stalked off, wondering if there was something to what Eric had said. When normal people became aware of danger such as a gun-wielding dig director, they went on guard without realizing it. It was simply an innate reaction to the feeling of uncertainty. Who wanted to work a dig with that kind of menace in the air?

No matter. She shouldn’t allow the volatile mood to creep into her psyche so easily, and would not.

A fine mist veiled the camp, dulling the air, but not Annja’s determined attitude. Surely, if faeries did exist, they would be here in bonny Éire. The green was so intense it hurt her eyes. Rolling soft grass, untouched by dig tools or rut-forming tires, undulated up a distant hill and was topped by a scatter of scraggly pine trees.

Breathing deeply, she concentrated on centering herself. She had let anxiety get the better of her. A deep inhale scented salty and fresh, mixed with earth and gasoline fumes.

“Petrol,” she muttered, correcting her language for the country.

“This way.” Daniel appeared, muddy fedora tilted to shadow his eyes. “I’ll show you about the camp. You’ve already met both dig directors.”

“Yes, and Wesley offered to show me around.”

“He’s nursing his wounds and letting the females fuss over him. This won’t take long. You’ve seen most of the layout already.”

His footsteps were fun to follow. Toes pointed forty-five degrees outward, Annja tried to fit her steps into his prints in the drying mud but her balance wavered from the task.

The sight of a little old lady in her peripheral view intrigued her. One was never too old to work a dig as long as they were eager. But Annja suspected perhaps the woman was a local who brought food to the crews, which was always a blessing when that happened.

She caught up to Daniel’s long strides. “Who is that?”

“Ah? Me mum. She visits digs on occasion. We get a lot in the area. Wanders the countryside and riverbank endlessly. Always looking for geegaws and collectibles, she is.”

“Collectibles? But whatever is dug up on-site is an artifact. She doesn’t try to buy things from the dig, does she?”

“Buy? Oh, no. You’d be amazed what an apple pie and a string of fresh blood sausage can get you.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“It’s how I learned to barter, watching me mum. She’s an avid collector. Her cottage is filled overflowing with all sorts of things. You’ll have to pay her a visit while you’re here.”

“I think I’d like that.” The idea of the old woman bartering for things found on digs—items that should normally belong to the landowner or government—stirred Annja’s curiosity. And her sense for protecting history.

“She’d be pleased if you would stop in for supper one night. I’ll arrange it, then.”

“So you have an interest in archaeology, Daniel?”

“Nope.”

“But you know the dig directors?”

“Yep.”

“What about this Neville guy?”

“Frank Neville. He’s an…acquaintance. I met him a few years ago and traded him a bottle of Lafite.”

Eric had referred to wine as being Daniel’s passion.

Bartering was a way of life for some people. They lived off the land, didn’t consume anything that could not be recycled and basically existed off the electronic grid. She suspected Daniel was the sort, and perhaps got by on very little, save for what he obviously bartered for.

“I know everyone in the area and most of West Cork, too, it seems,” he said. “Hear they believe they found some kind of faerie spear on this particular dig.”

“Allegedly. The spear of Lugh. It’s connected to the Tuatha Dé Danaan.”

“The tribe of the goddess Danu. I know the story. Don’t know much about the spear.”

“One of four magical gifts brought by the Danaan from four island cities of Tír na nÓg. It’s supposed to never miss its target and always return to the hand that threw it.”

He nodded, and shrugged. “Me mum’s probably already got it, then.”

WHILE THREE WOMEN and one man went about cleaning up their loose dirt and packing away their tools for the night, Wesley was still working when Annja returned to the dig square.

He waved her over and showed her the strata trench. Dug down about two feet, this trench was preserved to study the stratigraphy and gauge the year for each level of earth dug. Photographic records were usually kept nowadays, but Wesley explained he’d given Theresa a drawing frame and set her to work recording the north corner of the dig where a few pot fragments had been partially uncovered.

“Everyone should learn how to do it the old-fashioned way,” he said.

Annja sensed he enjoyed teaching and the satisfying tedium of the old-fashioned way. She would never go against a director’s methods, and didn’t mind the old-fashioned way so much herself.

He handed her a trowel, and Annja squatted next to him.

In this quadrant, the crew had dug down to about the mid-nineteenth century, according to a small matchstick tin they’d found two days earlier. Wesley suspected they’d tapped into a farmhouse that may have held victims of the potato famine. He planned to bring in soil samples to a lab in Cork for verification.

“I suspect we’ll find the pathogen that destroyed the crops,” he commented. “As I told you, we haven’t found any bones yet. Perhaps this farmstead was lucky and the family found their way to Liverpool or even America.”

Neither of which option would have been preferred, Annja mused. The Irish immigrants arriving in America had been treated as second-class citizens, if they made the trip successfully. The emigrants crossing the ocean to find prosperity in America were usually struck down with disease and fever during the long journey on the so-called coffin ships. And if they did set foot in New York, they were discriminated against, cheated and treated cruelly.

In England they’d received no better treatment. As soon as they’d arrived in Liverpool most of the Irish riffraff had been deported directly back to Cork.

With the open dig plan, the entire squared-off area was dug down, and baulks, or aisles of dirt marked in a grid and not dug, were not utilized.

Annja preferred the open-dig method. It was well enough that the walls of the open area served as a stratigraphy to measure their progress. One stone wall had been unearthed, and Wesley’s crew had earlier uncovered a fireplace.

“Was that feature apparent before digging began?” she asked Wesley.

“Yes, the entire stretch of wall and the stones of the hearth. The farmer removed the turf and found it. We’ve got dirt here, though, not peat like the other camp. I’m guessing the enemy camp is looking at the end of a farm plot, perhaps animal stables and a pond.”

Wesley pointed out an area he was working on and she moved beside him to inspect.

“A wall feature, yes?” He traced the outline of an oblong mound with the tip of his trowel. “Probably another two or three feet into the earth. Puts us back another few centuries. I just wish we had the time to go at this slowly. Yesterday one of my crew destroyed a wood feature, could have been a table or part of a chair. Can’t blame her, though.”

Annja teased the dirt with her trowel and worked efficiently next to Wesley. “Why the rush?”

“Slater’s been pushing to get us all to leave. I managed to negotiate another week.”

“What have they found that they want to keep you off the entire dig so badly? Have you gone over and taken a look around?”

He swiped a hand over his hair and lifted his face to worship the setting sun. “Tried, but there’s security at night. Only one guard I’ve noticed, but I’m sure that’s a machine gun slung across his shoulder. Couple of nights ago they drove a truck in and something was going on.”

“You camp on-site?”

“Not usually, but I’d been tooling around with this feature, wanted to get deeper. You know how that goes.”

“You love the work,” Annja guessed.

“As much as I bet you love it. I gotta ask, and I hope you don’t mind.”

“Go ahead.”

“How did you ever get involved in a TV show that chases after stories like the other crowd?”

“We chase all sorts, actually. Werewolves, vampires, yeti.” Annja smirked. “We’re an equal-opportunity monster-hunting show.”

“Well, now, you ever talk to a vampire?”

“No. You?”

He cast her that sexy grin that Annja was beginning to realize must work as a sort of lodestone to any women within stumble-over-her-feet range. “Nope, but wouldn’t mind the conversation over roast pheasant with Vlad the Impaler.”

“He’s dead.” She lifted a trowel of displaced dirt and emptied it into a nearby bucket. “And so is Frankenstein’s monster and Dr. Jekyll. Not dead, actually, never existed.”

“Skeptic, eh? So why this assignment?”

“It got me here, sitting in a pile of ancient rubble, with trowel in hand. Couldn’t be happier. Well, I could.”

“How so?”

“Earlier, you mentioned the men who disappeared, but we were interrupted before I could ask more. Can you tell me anything about the girl who disappeared from this dig? Description? Was she friends with everyone here? Anyone have something against her? Was she native to the area?”

“Whoa, the detective is overtaking the archaeologist.”

“It’s what we do, isn’t it? Play detective. Search for clues and piece them together to create a story.”

Wesley tapped the trowel against his boot to shake off the dirt and sat back, wrists resting on his knees. “I wish I could help you, Annja.” He scanned the sky, yet Annja sensed his sudden lack of ease from the tapping of his fingers on his knee.

“Beth Gwillym was spending the summer here on the dig. She came from England, though haven’t a clue whereabouts. I don’t do background checks. Basically, if you’re willing and not stupid, you’re hired. She was pretty, young and amiable. I know it sounds awful, but I’ve been preoccupied with that other damned site lately. While I had in heart to keep my people protected from loose cannons like Slater, I should have been paying more attention to my own site. Beth was friendly with everyone, I do know that, didn’t have any enemies.”

“What about boyfriends? Anyone she was seeing? That she might have had a fight with?”

She couldn’t catch his facial movements because he’d tilted his head down, perhaps away from the sun. Annja suspected it was something less to do with the light than a need to keep secrets. Interesting.

“You’re not going to accept the well-agreed-upon fact that the other crowd snatched her away?”

Annja sighed. “Wesley, I know the Irish hold great reverence for…the fair folk. And sure, faeries like to steal humans, or trick them into their circles and make them dance for years and years.”

“They steal babies, too,” he added, more seriously than she wished. “Leave behind changelings, sometimes nothing more than a dried old stump sitting in the cradle.”

“Right. I don’t wish to challenge anyone’s pagan beliefs—”

“Ooh, the Catholic chick is challenging my beliefs.”

“What makes you say I’m Catholic?”

“A guess. Almost twenty percent of the world is. And I’m not a pagan, just a believer in what feels right.”

“Little people with wings feels right to you in this situation?”

He smirked. “No. But if you’ve read anything about the Irish legends of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, they’re not so little. Our size, actually.”

“I did do research on the flight here. They were warriors who landed in Ireland around 1470 BC.”

“Right,” Wesley said. “And after many battles against the original Irish, or Fir Bolgs and Milesians, they were finally defeated and went to live underground with the Sidhe. They never reveal themselves to humans, unless you’re one of the old folk who do put credence in the myth. I bet every other farmhouse in the county still puts a bowl of cream out on their back step before turning in, to appease the other crowd.”

“Bet the feral cats love that,” Annja said.

“Meow,” Wesley said snidely. “So I’m guessing I’ll never see Annja Creed’s name connected with astro-archaeology?”

“You got that right.”

Some astro-archaeologists believed humans on earth were descended from aliens, or at the least, they’d been given alien technology to create some of the amazing architecture throughout history. A person had to possess a certain degree of belief in the unbelievable. No skeptics allowed.

“Ever been to Puma Punku?” Wesley asked. “That site will make you wonder.”

“I have, and it did.”

The ruins in Bolivia were rumored to be seventeen thousand years old, yet they possessed remarkable stone technology. Some of the construction blocks were estimated at four hundred and forty tons. There was no known technology at the time that could have transported those blocks the distance from the quarry. The precisely cut stones stirred rumors of alien involvement in the creation.

“You know anyone with the other dig who might talk? Someone friendly and not packing a Walther?” Annja asked.

The sun beamed across Wesley’s face as he thought about it. Annja loved the rugged, adventurer look. He was a man of her kin. Happy under the open sky, and always with dirt under his fingernails, and a question that needed answering.

“Nope, not a one. They’re mostly new since the camps have split. Don’t really know any other than Slater. He’s a Brit, you know.”

“Got a problem with Brits?”

“As a matter of fact, they don’t know how to dig correctly.” He tapped her trowel, which she had been absentmindedly scraping across the surface, and now realized she’d nicked a piece of something white. “What do you have there?”

“Looks like a bone. Excellent. Let me show you how well I can dig.”

“All right, American. Hey, what’s that?”

Looking up from the find, Annja squinted and scanned the horizon. A crowd was gathering at the field edge where the grass grew high and both camps joined.

“Let’s go take a look.” Wesley left her behind, but not for long.

“Annja!” Eric appeared, gestured toward the commotion and took off, camera at the ready.

The cause of the excitement wandered onto the dirt area in front of a parked vehicle. A woman about twenty-two. Surrounded by curious people, she held out her hands as if to ask for space, or maybe just to keep her bearings.

“Beth,” Annja heard Wesley say.

The missing girl? She quickened her steps to join the gathering. The crowd was keeping its distance, not blocking her in, yet one woman took Beth’s arm and led her to a stop.

“Beth?” Wesley approached her. “Where have you been?”

The bedraggled woman stared blindly at Wesley. A few leaves were tucked in the dirty blond strands of her tangled hair. Her fingers and palms were dirty, as well as the knees of her khaki pants. All in all, though, she looked healthy; maybe she’d just taken a stumble in the dirt.

Annja recalled what Daniel had said about her disappearance. She had been missing a little over thirty-six hours.

“Who took you?” someone called out from the crowd.

“Yes.” Annja stepped forward and addressed the woman. “Do you know what happened? Who took you? Or did you get lost?”

Beth looked up and when Annja thought the frail, shaking woman was looking into her eyes she realized she was focused just over her shoulder—where Eric stood with the camera.

“The fair folk,” the woman said.

The crowd nodded, muttering that they knew it. Didn’t want to believe it, but now it was a sure thing.

Annja turned to Eric and rolled her eyes at the camera. “Cut,” she said.