JANUARY 8

Anja's knee kissed gravel as she leaned her motorcycle into the turn at speed. The demons in her head sniggered at the prospect of her sudden demise, as rocks kicked up by the front tire pelted her riding leathers and bounced off her goggles. The edge of her rear tire scraped the dirt road's precipice. Pebbles rolled down the cliff into the fog-shrouded jungle far below. Around the bend, she straightened her stance and twisted open the throttle.

Ahead, beyond drifting veils of mist, her prey accelerated and widened his lead. Anja's 1953 Vincent Black Shadow had been touted by its maker as the fastest motorcycle in the world, but that didn't matter much on Bolivia's infamous Death Road. The one-lane dirt trail snaked along a mountainside covered in tropical forest. Waterfalls often manifested without warning and filled the road with lakes of mud, and the jungle below was said to have been blanketed with fog since before mankind first arrived in South America.

Condensation clouded the bike's gauges. Anja had to trust her feel for the Black Shadow as she pushed it hard through an S-turn, and she prayed for a straightaway on the other side so that she could close the gap between her and her escaping Nazi target.

Bullets zinged past her right shoulder. Bark exploded from slender tree trunks. Stones leapt from the muddy earth and tumbled into the road behind Anja.

She glanced at her right mirror. A line of four motorcycles — souped-up BMW touring bikes, the same kind as the one she was chasing — were pursuing her.

They knew I would hunt him, Anja realized. This is a trap.

The quartet was closing in. They were only seconds behind her now.

Anja berated herself for getting careless. She shifted her weight with the direction of the next curve and got so low that she felt the road grind against the side of her leg. More bullets ripped past above her and vanished into the mist. Swinging into the back of the S-turn, she plucked her last grenade from her bandolier. She squeezed its shoe in her left hand. "Danochar," she said to her invisible demonic porter, "take the grenade's safety pin — and only the pin." In a blink, the safety pin vanished.

She let the grenade fall from her hand onto the foggy road.

After she rounded the next turn she heard the explosion — coupled with the screams of riders caught in the blast or thrown with their broken bikes into the haze-masked treetops far below. Men and machines crashed through branches with cracks like gunshots. Then there was only silence on the road behind her.

Ahead of her, the man she had come to kill fought to extend his lead.

The roar of the wind and the growl of the Black Shadow bled together as Anja pushed the British-made motorcycle to its limits. The bike cleaved its way across a deep puddle. Anja used what mass she had to pull her bike around a close pair of perilous turns, and then she bladed through a wall of fog to see a straight patch of road with her prey in the middle of it.

She gunned the throttle and ducked low to reduce her wind resistance. Her long sable hair whipped in the wind like serpents.

Just have to get close enough before he makes the next turn ...

At last the Black Shadow lived up to its reputation. It felt like a rocket as it brought Anja to within five meters of the fleeing Nazi. She followed him through the next turn — then dodged toward the cliff wall on her right as he flung a hunting knife blindly over his shoulder. The blade soared past her head and then it was gone, out of mind.

Enough. I came for the kill, not the hunt.

Calling once more upon her yoked demonic arsenal, Anja conjured the spectral whip of Valefor. A flick of her wrist sent the massive bullwhip streaking ahead of her. Its barbed tip wrapped around the neck of her target, and Anja squeezed the Black Shadow's brake lever.

Her bike skidded to a halt on the dirt road, and her whip went taut. It jerked the Nazi off his ride, which launched itself off the cliff into the gray murk between the trees. As the Nazi landed on his back, his bike vanished. From the impenetrable mists came the snaps of it crashing through heavy branches, a sound that made Anja think of a hammer breaking bones.

She shifted the Black Shadow's engine into neutral, slowed its throttle to a rumbling purr, and then lowered its custom side stand. Her magickal whip remained coiled around her target's neck as she prowled forward to lord her victory over him.

A jerk of the whip focused his attention on her. "You are Herr König, yes?"

He spat at her. "You're the Jungle Witch."

It amused her that the Nazis whom she had spent the better part of a decade hunting throughout South America had somehow mistaken her for a local. The error was forgivable, she supposed; her prolonged exposure to the sun and weather had tanned her once-pale skin, effectively masking her Russian heritage. She drew her hunting knife from its belt sheath and leaned down. "Move and I'll cut your throat."

He remained still, no doubt in part because the demon's whip was still coiled around his throat. The strap of the man's leather satchel crossed his torso on a diagonal. She sliced through it near its top, above his shoulder and close enough to his throat to keep him cowed.

"Don't move," Anja said. With a spiral motion of her hand, she commanded Valefor's whip to bind the German fugitive war criminal at his wrists and ankles. Certain he was restrained, she picked up his satchel and pawed through its contents. Most of it was exactly what she had expected to find: extra magazines for the man's Luger, which was still in its holster on his right hip; a few wads of cash in different currencies, all of which she pocketed. She shook the bag upside down. From it fell an ivory pipe, a bag of tobacco, a pencil, an assortment of nearly worthless coins, and a battered old compass. The bag appeared to be emptied, but it still felt heavy to Anja. She muttered, "What are you hiding in here?"

With her hands she searched the interior of the satchel. She found hidden pouches concealed under large flaps. Her prisoner squirmed on the ground as she untied the laces of the flaps. One pouch contained what looked like assorted resources of the Art. From the satchel's other clandestine pouch she pulled a leather-bound journal. "Well," she said, flipping open the book to peruse its handwritten contents, "this is interesting." The few full words and sentences it contained were scribbled in German, but her yoked spirit LIOBOR made it possible for Anja to read any human language with ease. Unfortunately, the spirit was of no help when it came to parsing the acronyms and abbreviations that littered most of the pages.

She showed the open journal to her prisoner. "Explain your acronyms."

"Burn in Hell, witch."

"In time, yes." She flipped another page and admired its high-quality linen paper. "I know your Thule Society dabblers have re-formed under the name Black Sun, as a nod to Herr Himmler. But what is Odessa? Is that your network here in South America? The one that brought you all to Argentina when the war...