The phone rang.

He stopped.

Then felt a heavy push from behind, and before he knew what was happening, Tuk went sprawling through the doorway and into the darkness beyond.

23.

Annja tossed and turned on the bed of silky soft pillows and tried to get comfortable. From her quarters, an open window looked down upon the pavilion. Tropical breezes swept through the curtains and across her skin. The temperature was absolutely perfect for sleeping.

And yet, she couldn't.

The idea that Garin was somehow involved in this whole mess had her confused. Why exactly had he hired Tuk to watch over her? Since when did Annja need a guardian angel, anyway? She had her sword. And the sword could handle anything that she'd ever come up against.

Although, she thought, she hadn't had much occasion to use the blade on this outing. Something told her that if Hsu Xiao was really coming here, then that would soon be rectified.

Annja wondered how Mike was doing. After he'd stormed off, she'd tried to find him but he seemed intent on avoiding any contact. Annja decided that he needed some alone time and had gone to bed to try to get some rest. She would have thought that would be an easy task given how much the strain of the past day had worn on her. But after nearly an hour of tossing and turning, even she had to admit that something wasn't letting her sleep.

She sat on the stone window ledge and peered out across the land. The winds swept through the trees, rustling leaves. She could see the tall gra.s.ses sway. And all about this place, everything seemed perfectly still. Perfectly...perfect.

Annja frowned. It wasn't that she didn't believe in an absolute peace. It was just that she had never seen anything that even approached the tranquility of this land. It was an oddity to her.

How is this even possible? she wondered. Where are we...exactly?

The idea that Shangri-La existed on the other side of Dhaulagiri Mountain didn't sit right with Annja's a.n.a.lytical mind. Some part of her rejected that outright, saying that it would be impossible for such a place to exist and stay hidden from the technological eye of modern man.

Despite what Vanya and Guge might want her to believe, Annja couldn't buy into it.

Still, if they were in some sort of magical location, then what was it? How did it operate? Annja wasn't naive enough to think that just because something may or may not be magical, there weren't rules that it would have to abide by, as well. She'd seen enough crazy stuff in her life to know that all things in the universe-even those that were presently unexplainable-still had a rule book they had to follow.

So how did Shangri-La function?

She dressed quickly and walked down the stairs back toward the pavilion. The amazing thing about this place was there seemed to be very few individual homes anywhere. And everyone seemed to disappear to sleep at the same time. Earlier this evening, right after the party had disbanded, people simply vanished. Annja wrote it off as everyone going off to bed, but now it triggered an alarm bell inside her gut.

Her footfalls were silent on the courtyard stonework. Annja moved across the open pavilion and stole back down the grand staircase toward the fields below. As she walked, she kept her senses alert for any movement that might alert her she was not alone.

But as far as she could tell, she was just that. Alone.

This is weird, she thought. Where is everyone?

Even Tuk seemed to have vanished earlier. Annja had last seen him walking with Guge. Presumably, Tuk was going to get his father to tell him how to cross over so that Garin could find them.

Annja frowned. She wasn't sure that was such a good idea. The times she'd been around Garin in the past had usually amounted to a lot of tension between them and then a differing agenda that left Annja on the losing end of things.

But then again, Garin had seemed sincere about wanting to keep Annja safe. But from what? The Chinese a.s.sa.s.sin? Was Annja truly in the crosshairs? And, if so, how did the Chinese know she would be coming over here? Couldn't they have taken her out when she was back in Brooklyn?

Too many things just didn't make sense. Her mind and spirit were at odds and the resulting battle had one casualty- Annja's sleep.

She crossed into the open fields and started walking toward the groves of fruit trees farther ahead. She could smell their scent as she approached. Their branches looked strong and supple. Annja reached up and twisted a peach from one of the branches and held on to it as she continued toward the edge of the field.

Overhead, the stars winked at her and, somewhere far above, clouds wove strange patterns across the night sky. The effect was incredibly peaceful.

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 h.e.l.l 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 s.p.a.ce to use her sword to its fullest advantage. But how would she convince the shadow to pursue her? She had to a.s.sume the shadow knew how to fight and do so extremely well. There was no way it would simply follow Annja if it meant giving up its advantage in the room.

Annja attacked savagely and thought she felt her blade slide into a piece of flesh. But the shadow never once uttered a sound.

Instead, it came back at Annja, swinging its claws with full force. Annja was driven back to the doorway and then beyond into the corridor.

Instead of continuing the fight, though, Annja ran.

She dashed down the steps back into the open pavilion. She had no idea if the shadow had followed her or not. She couldn't hear anything. Even her own footsteps had been virtually silent thanks to the thick stone steps.

Annja whirled in time to see the shadow floating down from the second floor bedroom window of Annja's quarters.

It flies, Annja thought. How is that possible?

But she had no time to think it through. The shadow attacked again, this time kicking Annja in the stomach.

Annja flew back, feeling her wind rush out of her body.

The shadow followed up with a resounding punch to Annja's chin. Annja saw stars and tried to blink away the tears that welled up in her eyes.

Annja crouched, pivoting on her knee, trying to cut the shadow open at the midsection.

But the shadow backflipped away, tumbling across the pavilion and disappearing into the corridors beyond.

Annja stood there with her sword gleaming in the night.

Stay or follow?

She'd tricked the shadow into coming down here where she could better use the blade. Now the shadow probably wanted to return the favor.

Annja shook her head. No way was she following.

From the darkness across the courtyard, Annja heard a soft whisper cut through the night air. She jerked her sword up and cut it across her face, severing the arrow that had been fired at her from somewhere beyond the range of her sight.

The two pieces fell and skittered across the stone floor.

Annja heard another series of whispers and twisted to avoid the bolts that flew at her.

Again and again, arrows flew at her body and Annja found her lungs heaving as she struggled to avoid them. I'm silhouetted out here in the dim light, she thought. I need to be invisible, too.

Annja ran toward the darkness where the shadow had fled. Rus.h.i.+ng through the doorway, she cut right and left and above and below, trying to score a direct hit with her offense.

But she cut nothing.

She heard a soft peal of laughter ring out, carried to her ears on the breeze that brushed past her face.

Annja pivoted and sliced nothing but air.

But she'd sensed movement.

Something had rushed past her back into the open courtyard of the pavilion.

Annja raced back out, still keeping the sword in front of her to protect her if need be.

Perched atop one of the stone walls leading up toward Annja's quarters, the shadow was hunched. Against the night sky, it looked like a feral cat.

And it cast one final look at Annja before leaping off into the night.

24.

The ringing of the phone echoed in Tuk's ears as he pitched and fell headlong through the doorway into the blackness beyond. His hands instinctively shot out, reaching, grabbing for anything to help break his fall. He felt a weird fabric brush against his hands and he clutched at the material before it gave way under his body weight. It enshrouded him as he continued to fall forward until he hit his face against something hard.

For a moment, he lay there unsure of what had just happened. His phone had rung and then he'd been shoved from behind. But had his own father pushed him through the doorway? That didn't make any sense.

Tuk heard a heavy rumbling sound and yanked off the black material in time to see a giant slab of stone slam shut, enclosing him in a small ten-by-ten-foot room.

"Hey!"

Tuk's voice echoed back at him. He could tell the walls must have been exceedingly thick. He didn't think any bit of sound would escape this room no matter how hard he tried to shout.