False Horizon - Alex Archer [63]
Annja bit into the peach, aware of how incredibly juicy it was. She ate it quickly and then tossed the pit onto the ground.
Annja looked around in every direction and saw nothing that would lead her to believe this place was inhabited. No lights, no noise, no nothing.
Everyone seemed to have disappeared.
Except for her.
Annja started walking back to the grand staircase. Surely there would be attendants awake in the temple corridors. Perhaps she could ask them a few questions and try to put her mind at rest.
But as Annja ascended the stairs, she heard nothing.
Back at the top, as she traveled down corridor after corridor and checked out room after room, she found nothing. There were no people anywhere. And worse, there were no personal belongings to speak of.
It was as if she was on some sort of weird soundstage in a movie production lot. But the land was real and surely the peach she’d eaten was real.
So where the hell was everyone else?
She ducked back upstairs to her room and tried again to sleep. Perhaps, she thought, if I go to sleep, tomorrow will sort things through.
But her mind raced as soon as she lay down.
Annja sat up and frowned.
Shangri-La was turning out to be anything but paradise.
She yawned and realized how utterly fatigued she was. Even if she couldn’t sleep, maybe just closing her eyes would make everything feel better. She leaned back and felt her head sink into one of the pillows.
A delicate scent of honeysuckle tickled her nostrils and Annja smiled. She loved that scent. Always had.
She thought about the golden sunshine and how warm it had been earlier today. It reminded her of sitting on a tropical beach somewhere watching the blue-green waves crash in against the sandy shore, frothing white before retreating once more to the water.
Annja stretched her limbs and tried to release all of her nervous energy. Wherever she was, she decided, it was better than being back in that cold, snowy cave.
In the next instant, driven purely by instinct, she leaped from the bed into a standing position. In her hands, the sword had already materialized.
Several images registered at once as she came fully awake.
A dark shadow behind her bed.
Hands extended over the pillow where she’d been lying. Claws.
Annja flicked the sword up in front of her and, from behind her bed, tracked the shadow. It was bathed in black cloth, invisible in the dim twilight of the room. There was no moon, making the landscape even darker.
But the shadow that stalked Annja seemed to simply bleed across the floor toward her, its hands upraised in a fighting stance vaguely reminiscent to Annja. She’d seen it somewhere before, but where?
The figure in black didn’t scream or jerk its body in any fashion. One second it was coolly regarding Annja as a cat might look at a mouse.
The next instant, it attacked.
Annja was almost stunned by the sudden ferocity of the attack. The figure slashed at Annja’s face with its claws.
Annja deftly flicked her sword up, intending to cut the attacker’s hands, but she heard something she didn’t expect. It was the clang of metal against metal.
Annja moved back for more room. Swinging a sword in a confined space wasn’t the best use of it as a weapon. The shadow had the advantage of a smaller tool used in a close environment.
But Annja didn’t intend to go down without a fight.
As the shadow advanced again, Annja could see that the skin around the eyes had been darkened, as well, rendering the figure nearly invisible save for the whites of the eyeballs themselves.
Again and again it came at Annja. Annja used the sword to ward off the attacks, but her own offensive struggled to get off the ground. Annja stabbed and took short cuts at the shadow, but the figure merely moved out of the way and out of range.
Annja shook her head. She needed open space to use her sword to its fullest advantage. But how would she convince the shadow to pursue her? She had to assume the shadow knew how to fight and do