Immortal Swordslinger (Book 1)
Dante King
Copyright © 2018 by Dante King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
1. Himalayan Temple
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
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1
Himalayan Temple
I turned away from the helicopter’s window, and the man sitting uncomfortably close to me stared back with piggy eyes screwed up behind a pair of thick-framed glasses.
“You look foreign,” he said in Russian, shouting to be heard over the aircraft’s engines. His tone made clear how little he thought of foreigners. I wasn’t surprised. Half were probably hardline nationalists, trusted by the Russian government to do exactly as they were told. The rest…
Well, that was how I’d infiltrated this mission. A group of insurgents had caught word of a special government project, and the bigs at Running Blade Security were more than happy to assist. Too bad it meant sharing a ride with the buffoon sitting next to me.
“My father was Chinese,” I replied in Russian with a hint of an eastern accent that made it sound like I was trying to hide a rural upbringing. What I’d said was entirely true, and it was the only half of my background the man needed to know. That my mother was from north London wouldn’t exactly fit with my cover story.
“I like the Chinese,” the man said. “They’re industrious. Like ants.”
“I always wanted to be compared to an insect,” I replied with a cool smile. “Got any more compliments for the journey?”
The man opened his mouth, then hesitated as he caught the edge in my voice. He looked me up and down, clearly recognizing all six feet and one inch of my athletically muscled body beneath layers of warm clothing. That look was all it took for him to shut his mouth and stare out the window for what I hoped would be the rest of the trip.
I peered through the window on my side of the helicopter and saw the Himalayas standing like proud and ancient giants, their gray shoulders draped in deep drifts of snow, their feet planted in the Asian earth thousands of feet below. It was a breathtaking sight: craggy peaks dark against a perfect blue sky with rivers and trails winding between them in the valleys far below. I’d never seen anything so awe-inspiring.
Talbot, my superior at Running Blade Security, had sent me on this mission because he thought it wouldn’t amount to anything—the Russian insurgents were a paranoid bunch with lofty goals and grand imaginations, he said. The briefing had listed government-supported scientists experimenting with ancient magic. Talbot had himself a right chuckle at that. Me? I didn’t care whether I’d actually discover any classified government secrets, let alone magic. I was just happy to get out of the office and venture onto the field for a solo mission.
“Don’t forget to wear something warm, Ethan Murphy,” Talbot had said the last time I called HQ, his tone full of mockery. He loved using my full name whenever we spoke, as though I was ashamed of it for some reason. It was my name, so I didn’t really give a damn when he used it. Still, I’d hung up immediately after rather than listen to my superior laughing at his own supposed joke. Life was too short to be wasted on some people.
I dozed with the memory on my mind before the soft thud of the helicopter jolting woke me up. Outside the window, a mountain’s face stood very close by, and I realized that we’d landed.
Nearby, huts clustered around several openings in the mountainside. Behind them, on the side of the mountain, stood a temple. Its style was ancient, from the tiled pagoda roof down to the dragon statues out front, yet it looked like it was newly built. Though snow lay all around it, there was none on the temple itself. It was as if it had appeared suddenly, out of nowhere, all pristine and glistening. Except that was impossible, so I supposed that its owner possessed a sizable team of groundskeepers to keep it free of snow and in immaculate condition. There was probably a religious reason for maintaining the temple, but I didn’t give it a second thought—my mission involved the team of scientists inside a facility within the mountain, not the temple.
The helicopter’s doors opened, and a pair of soldiers approached. They each sported rifles and wore snow terrain fatigues. Neither said anything as they almost forcefully ushered me and the other passenger across a concrete landing pad and into the mouth of a tunnel in the mountainside. A steel door slammed shut behind us, then another, as we were led deeper into the facility.
We crossed bare concrete hallways illuminated by overhead lights, pausing every so often at an armed door that the soldiers would open via retina scanners. I noted the number of doors and kept track of the path back to the landing pad in case I ever needed to make a quick exit. The retina scanners might prove troublesome, but it looked like they were only necessary to enter deeper into the facility, not to backtrack out of it.
At last, we reached a room warm enough to remove our coats. Several men in suits stood there waiting.
“Vasily Leontev?” one of them called out.
“That’s me,” I said as I wriggled out of my coat.
“Come with me,”he said.
I followed him down a corridor, relieved to leave my traveling companion behind. As we walked, I paid careful attention to the details of the facility—how it was constructed, signs labeling facilities such as a chemical lab and medical bay,
