THE HEART OF ENKI
By Mary Travis
William Styles stared at the headline and tried to dispel the sliver of fear without much success. The articles found on the third or fourth page of the newspaper was hardly front-page news in a world where German nationalism was growing out of control and German Jews were fleeing the country in droves. The country was still in the midst of an economic disaster it was still trying to claw its way out of and even with the President’s promise to put people back to work, America had much better things to occupy itself with than a foreign curiosity that was of interest only to history buffs or treasure hunters.
Tossing the paper aside, he tried not to think about the ramifications of that headline and knew he would not sleep tonight. As it was, the last six months had become an exercise in insomnia. The twilight hours saw him tossing and turning, unable to fall into a good, restful sleep because he feared the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head would finally drop. An old man shouldn’t be afraid to die and yet he was. He was terrified.
Back in his youth, he had been fearless. Of their quartet, William was the one who encouraged the others to embark on their often ill-thought adventures. Donald Avery of Donnie as he was known to his friends, would tsk-tsk at him and try to offer a more reasoned course of action but in the end, William, who was handsome and charismatic won their companions over. Henry 'Hank' Conley would shrug and shift anxiously, adjusting the spectacles on the bridge of his nose before finally agreeing to it. This would lead into Orin Travis slapping him on the back and praising him for his sense of adventure.
Now only he and Orin remained and if they came for him, the burden of being the last would fall to Orin. He did not want to die but with the headline in the newspaper, their coming was inevitable.
Hank died six months ago, although some would say he had been gone for longer. The man’s spirit had been broken years ago when his daughter and grandson were killed in a fire. Hank had been treading water ever since then. While there was every reason to assume Hank’s fall down the stairs could have been simply an accident, William was not that certain.
Orin, who was always the practical one among them, told him he was being silly but then Orin always kept his head better than all of them. It was Orin who pulled him back when he was behaving recklessly. Even if Hank’s death wasn’t the cause of old age or foul play, William knew his death would almost certainly be an act of murder. In fact, he was rather surprised, they hadn’t come for him already. Perhaps, they would try for Orin first. In any case, it didn’t matter, they would still be coming.
With the Heart found, they could do nothing else.
With the discovery of the Heart, everything changed. The four friends who once went to Arabia on a treasure hunting expedition had gone blundering into the ancient world, without any idea what mysteries they were in danger of unleashing on the world. Like entitled Americans of their generation, they sailed across the sea, seeking adventure while intoxicated with tales of ancient cities and buried treasure. Not one of them spared a thought to their act of desecration as they planned to plunder the relics of civilisations ancient when Caesar crossed the Rubicon.
Embarking on an expedition with Sir John Evans who was going to Mesopotamia to make mineral surveys, to four young men, it sounded like the journey of a lifetime. Since none were married and all were in possession of a good fortune, it seemed like just the thing to occupy their attention until it was time to come home and take up the responsibilities of life.
What they found, was the ancient city of Ur, used for almost 4000 years as a necropolis.
There was treasure to go around as they looted the ancient corpses, laden with jewellery and gold, completely oblivious to the sacrilege they were committing because they were young and foolish. Then, in a chamber, so secret even when the city was young, they found a temple. In it was the mummified corpse of a priest of no religion they recognised, though their guide claimed it was the false gods who ruled the world before Muhammad. Dating to the Sasanian Empire, the crypt in which the priest was entombed, came with four slots for storage at each corner. It was Donnie who broke open one first and discovered what was inside.
Ironically, it was also Donnie who also died first.
They each claimed the booty of a slot, which ended up being an ancient cylinder containing a cryptex. Each cryptex was sealed, only to be opened when a final missing piece was found - the Heart. Once opened, it was claimed the cryptices contained knowledge to destroy the world. All four men scoffed at this and their guide shrugged away the indifference of Americans. Sailing home, without a care in the world, they returned to their lives in the four corners of America, meeting yearly during summer and winter to catch up on old times and relive past glories.
Two years after they returned, Donnie died.
Someone broke into his home and slit his throat, taking the cryptex. Donnie had been a father for less than six months, leaving alone his wife Eleanor with a young daughter named Julia. Only then, did the danger became real to them, if not the superstition around it, and they took steps to protect the cryptex in their possession. William didn’t believe in prophecy but the fanatics who killed Donnie did and so each man hid the cryptices and was ever vigilant after.
They never spoke of the artifacts again, not even in private when they saw each other. When Hank passed six months ago, William assumed it was an accident until he realised the place where Hank stored his cryptex was broken into and the object stolen. Whoever murdered Donnie was still searching for the rest of the cryptices.
Now he understood why. The Heart was found.
William who became an expert in the cryptices the ancients called Pillars knew what this meant. The fanatics would be on the move again and while it might be superstition compelling them to fulfil their god Erran’s bidding, William could not be so sure. Writing to his daughter Alexandra, presently at university in Pennsylvania, he told her his sorry tale and hoped if anything happened to him, she would know what to do.
More importantly, she had to ensure his piece of the puzzle would never fall into the hands of the fanatics who would use the cryptices to uncreate the world.
CHAPTER ONE:
KPINGA OF CREATION
SOMEWHERE IN THE CONGO - 1935
“How on Earth, do I allow you to convince me to embark on these foolhardy escapades?”
Ezra Standish, who preferred to call himself Chief Procurer, (though his associates persisted in referring to him with the less dignified appellation of Scrounger), demanded as he stood waist-deep in a liquid reeking of aromatic spices, such as cinnamon, cardamom, garlic while fingers of chilli and sprigs of mint drifted past him. As he awaited the answer from inside the earthenware pot that was large enough for him and his companion to occupy, more liquid was being poured into the receptacle, as well as what appeared to be whole onions, split eggplants and strands of long, green beans.
“Relax Ezra, this is just temporary,” Nathan Jackson remarked, his calm a stark contrast to Ezra’s somewhat agitated state. Leaning against the curved wall of the pot, he picked up one of the beans floating by and crunched down on it. As Ezra watched appalled, Nathan dipped the remaining half of the stalk into the liquid and tasted it. “Not bad. Needs more salt.”
Ezra was aghast. “The salt will undoubtedly come when they boil the skin off our bones! You do realise we are the meat in this...this...vile stew!” He swatted an offending onion away, causing it to bump against the ceramic just as more liquid was poured into the pot. “When I agreed to play decoy, you assured me these people would welcome us as servants of Muluku! Their creator god! It was the only reason why I was willing to accompany you on this part of the plan!”
“Yeah because telling you the Mangbetu Tribe were cannibals was a sure-fire way to get you to come with me,” Nathan grinned, swallowing down the last of the bean. “I ain’t stupid.”
Ezra glared at him. “You Sir have broken my trust!”
No sooner than he spoke those words, a fresh column of soup was poured through the opening of the pot, landing right on Ezra’s head. Nathan bit the inside of his cheek, knowing that he really shouldn’t laugh but he couldn’t help it. Ezra, who always managed to look like he stepped out of a Hollywood magazine like Clark Gable, in his riding breeches, tailored shirt and waistcoat, not to mention boots, looked like something the cat dragged in and got rid of because it just looked too sorry.
“I blame you,” he smouldered before taking a step back, away from any more descending columns of soup, he was meant to enhance with his flesh.
Wisely, Nathan managed to sidestep more vegetables being tossed into the pot, as they created splashes upon impact. Overhead, they could see the beauty of the African sky, cloudless and painted with different shades of cerulean. It was not quite noon and despite their current situation, had the makings of a nice day.
“Settle down Ezra,” Nathan replied with a little smile, not at all concerned because this sorry incident was only a small part of a bigger plan. “If you get upset, it will just make the meat tougher and that might piss them off.”
Ezra flung an onion at him. “Is that your attempt at humour? If so you are failing! How is it, whenever Mr Larabee requires a distraction of some sort, you invariably enlist me to aid you? And for some reason I cannot seem to comprehend, I always let you talk me into this insanity. When we were in Peru, I was the one who had to dress up like that virgin to charm the Chieftain.”
“Yeah,” Nathan tried to hide his smirk and failed completely. When the Chieftain had discovered Ezra was not, in fact, a lovely Amajuacas maiden but a man, the rest of the seven had believed their lovable gambler, scrounger and con man was done for. Except the Chief’s taste actually went that way. And Nathan thought he had seen Ezra scared before. “Well you know, if you have given it up to the man, you would have been up to your ears in honey and mangoes.”
“You have no shame,” Ezra glared at him. “How can you be so calm when these people are preparing to eat us!”
Nathan let out a sigh, deciding to give the man a break. “Ezra, we’ll be out of here as soon as Chris and JD gets to the Temple of Muluku and get the Kpinga. Not to mention, Vin and Josiah ain’t gonna let anything happen to us. Besides,” Nathan couldn’t help but add, “they’re just preparing the base. They haven’t even put us over a fire yet. A pot this size? It's going to take ages to simmer.”
“I admire your ability to make such distinctions,” Ezra grumbled.
The Kpinga of Creation supposedly the blade that the god Muluku used to cut the tails of the monkey to create the first men, was awaiting a buyer in Rhodesia who planned on taking it to the British Museum. Other parties had been after the blade for years, largely because the hilt of the thing was meant to be encrusted with a veritable fortune in diamonds. In their hands, the stones would be picked clean and sold individually, destroying the cultural value of the blade. While the seven weren’t being altruistic in their hunt for the object, they would rather see the thing preserved than destroyed.
And if they got paid handsomely for it, why not?
Suddenly the floor of the pot beneath them lifted and both men stumbled inside the large cooking receptacle while being sloshed around with the ingredients of the soup. Nathan managed to grip the edge and peek over it to see what was happening outside only to see the pot had been hoisted up with two carrying poles and being ferried to what looked like a pretty intense fire a short distance away.
Oh, Ezra was not going to like this...
******
The chamber was fifty feet from the entrance down the winding staircase to the large doors, framed by stone panthers on the other side of the room. The ceiling was constructed of rock, with ornate circular grooves equally spaced across its entire length and breath. There was nothing in the room except cobwebs as large as curtains draped in corners and dangling from above. The floor was created from slabs of black marble, each with a faded shape that looked like a star on each tile.
While Nathan and Ezra occupied the Mangbetu with the first taste of human flesh they had enjoyed in a while, Chris Larabee and JD Dunne had slipped unnoticed into Muluku’s temple to seek out the kpinga. The temple was old when the Nazarene was born and while the upper portion of the pyramid-like structure saw traffic by the Mangbetu, it appeared this section had been given a wide berth. The amount of dust on the floor and the stale air told Chris the natives stayed out of here.
Fortunately, there was a little light emanating through stone windows, which were little more than slots in the wall, but wide enough to ensure they were not completely bathed in darkness. It was just as well because Chris’s sense of trouble told him this room looked too benign for his liking. After years of doing this, a room like this was like flypaper. It was made to be a trap. The trick was trying to decipher how to avoid it or end up dying horribly, usually in some brutal death trap devised by superstitious people determined to protect their god.
“What now JD?” Chris glanced at the young man behind him.
JD Dunne was on loan to him from the University of New Mexico. The curator of its museum, Orin Travis had decided if Chris and his team were going to hunt down antiquities on the institution’s behalf, they ought to have the expertise of someone who actually knew languages and could decipher ancient codices. It was a shame the kid was going to have to go back to school soon because both Chris and Buck Wilmington had taken a real liking to him. Among the jaded treasure hunters that made up his team, JD was a breath of fresh air and Chris wanted to keep him around if only for Buck’s sake.
“Okay,” JD said trying not to appear nervous as he studied the ancient scroll in front of him, aiming the flashlight against the yellowed papyrus, studying the faded language on it. “According to this, to reach the Blade of Muluku, we must cross the great hall of heaven by following the spine of the cat.”
“The cat?” Chris shot him a look. “What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure,” JD stared at him. “I didn’t even think they had cats around here. I mean lions maybe, but not cats?”
Chris lapsed into thought for a moment. “Okay, let’s retrace until we can figure it out. I’m getting a sense of trouble about this room and I rather not find out the hard way what it’s hiding.”
“Hiding?” JD gulped, trying not to show his fear. Instinctively, his foot shifted backwards and scraped the tile behind him, without the young man realising it.
Suddenly, the sound of grinding rock screeched through the air, forcing Chris to spin sharply around on the slab he was standing on to see something shifting in the darkness above.
“JD!” He grabbed the young man by his coat and fairly lifted the young man off the ground a little so JD didn’t touch anything else. A column of stone slid out of the circular grooves he’d seen on the ceiling, slammed into the place where JD would have stood like a battering ram. The impact against the stone was so loud, Chris swore he heard the slab crack like an egg. If JD had still been standing there when it came down, he would have been pulverized.
“You okay kid?” Chris asked as JD stared at the spot, almost ashen with shock.
“Yeah,” he managed to nod a moment later. “I guess that’s what the hall of heaven means.” He replied but his voice was shaking.
“I’m fine,” the young man spoke. “I guess that means we can’t go backwards.”
Unfortunately, the impact of stone against stone meant their covert entry into this place may have been lost, if the excited voices he could hear distantly was any indication. While Chris could not understand the language, the chatter becoming increasingly louder told the leader of the Magnificent Seven, they were about to have company.
JD who could also hear the same noise stared at him. “Uh, Chris...”
“Yeah,” the Man in Black nodded. “We’re about to have company.”
Considering the Mangbetu’s word for company also translated into ‘meat for stew’, Chris decided it was probably best they were not present when the natives arrived. Fortunately, they had a narrow window of time because Chris was fairly certain the Mangbetus were prevented from entering this chamber by the same booby trap that almost claimed JD’s life a moment ago.
“Okay,” Chris faced front, ignoring the approach of the Mangbetu for now because they had a more immediate problem to deal with. “Read that last part for me again,” He instructed, studying the room carefully, now that he was aware those grooves were, in fact, the base of stone plinths that would crush them if they took a wrong step.
JD nodded quickly and looked at the scroll again. “We must cross the great hall of heaven by following the spine of the cat. I didn’t think they had cats around here. Lions and panthers maybe but not cats...”
“I don’t think they meant it literally,” Chris remarked, aware JD was still becoming accustomed to literal and symbolic translations after only a few months in the field with the team. However, the mention of panthers did get him thinking. He looked at the marble tiles they were standing on, all black, each with a star engraved in the rock. “JD, the spine of the cat, I think they mean the constellation Panther.”
“What?” JD’s eyes exclaimed as if a light bulb had gone off in his head. “I got it, Chris! A lot of Arabian influences filtered down to Africa, the Panther would be a Babylonian constellation they see in the winter months down this neck of the woods.”
“Very good,” Chris grinned. “Except we call the Panther, Cygnus. All right, I think I got this figured out.”
Chris was grateful for his knowledge of astronomy, at least the constellations, was up to scratch. It was a skill he found useful when one was lost somewhere without a compass or a map. The knowledge of the stars had kept him from wandering aimlessly about in the middle of deserts and in one case a jungle in New Guinea infested with tribes that collected heads as trophies. Apparently, his blond hair was meant to be something of a prize.
Taking one step to the tile left of him, Chris waited to see if he was correct in his assumption that the constellation Cygnus was the way to get across this floor in one piece. When no heavy plinth dropped down on either of them to offer a crushing death, Chris assumed he was on the right path. He took another step forward and then another left, before turning right. Repeating the sequence for another three times, they finally reached the great door on the other side of the room.
The entrance led to a smaller chamber, this one no more than ten feet across, with a pedestal in the centre of it. Lying across it was the Kpinga of Creation. The blade was gleaming, even though it had been languishing here for Christ knew how long, to say nothing about the large, rune sized diamonds encrusting the hilt. Too many treasure hunters had found themselves food for the Mangbetu because of their lust for those jewels.
“Wow,” JD exclaimed staring at the weapon. “It’s really here.”
“They wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of protecting it for centuries if it wasn’t,” Chris replied as they approached the pedestal. While the scroll that led them here said nothing about traps once they crossed the final hurdle, Chris wasn’t taking chances. Reaching into his black duster, he pulled out a foldable pointer and extended it to its full length.
“Get ready to move when I tell you,” Chris offered a warning as he used the pointer to push the blade off its stand.
No sooner than Chris had pushed the blade off the edge, causing it to clatter noisily against the floor, there was an audible snap of a mechanism and Chris saw the ornate grooves in the walls suddenly become pockmarked with small, dark holes. He had no more than a second to register this when he dropped to the ground at lightning speed, dragging JD with him. Thin wooden spikes flew out of the holes and across the room, embedding themselves in the opposite wall, intended to impale any thieves.
The spikes were sharp and lethal, no doubt laced with a toxin, Chris suspected. As both he and the young student lay crouched on the floor, Chris flashed him a grin.
“Better than a classroom, right?”
******
Shrouded behind thick leafy shrubs beneath the shade of tall, equatorial trees with broad leaves, and ignoring the discomfort of too much humidity, Vin Tanner stared through the sight of his M1 Garand rifle, watching the Mangbetu hoisting the large cooking pot on two carrying poles towards a rather impressive fire, in the middle of the village. Surrounding the campsite where the cooking was to be done were at least thirty Mangbetu natives, chanting and pounding against hide drums, performing their version of ringing the dinner bell.
Vin was stretched across the moist ground, his rifle perched on its stands, watching the proceedings and caught a glimpse of Nathan peeking over the edge of the pot, undoubtedly surveying the situation he and Ezra were in. The action apparently annoyed their hosts who immediately launched a litany of abuses that sent the team’s medic back into the pot again.
“Should we wait a little longer?” Vin asked. “Just to make Ezra sweat a little more.” He couldn’t help but say with a smirk. Knowing the man to the degree they did, Ezra was probably stewing already, without the need for a fire
“Probably not,” Josiah Sanchez remarked, the older man was staring through a pair of binoculars in a different direction, watching a group of warriors making fast tracks towards a location he knew all too well. He could see a dozen Mangbetu warriors, carrying sharp spears and cruel looking Kpingas, hurrying towards the entrance of Muluku’s Temple, meaning business.
From their vantage point, Josiah and Vin had remained undiscovered, prepared to perform their part of the plan, that is being the means to allow their comrades to escape when the time came. By the looks of Ezra and Nathan’s situation, not to mention the hordes about to descend on Chris and JD, that time was now.
“Judging by what’s happening at the temple, I’m guessing it’s time to vacate the area.” Josiah lowered his binoculars.
“You take all the fun out of things Josiah,” Vin smirked, not looking at the man as he took aim with his rifle, squeezing off a shot. The explosion of sound was quickly followed by the even more prolific impact of the bullet against the huge earthenware pot. The bullet shredded on impact as he intended, its duty to crack the ceramic open like an egg. It did so spectacularly, spilling out its contents, being Ezra and Nathan, onto the earth below.
The destruction scattered the warriors around the pot as Vin took pulled the trigger again. This time, the bullet struck a nearby post, the sound causing more disturbance than the actual bullet. Vin saw no reason to kill anyone unless they tried to get in the way when Nathan and Ezra made a run for it.
Meanwhile, Josiah was making his own preparations to create further discord in the village as he loaded up the compact mortar shells into the barrel of the wonderfully portable Ordnance ML two-inch Mortar Launcher. Pulling the trigger on the weapon, the shell exploded from the snub-nosed barrel and obliterated one of the huts nearest the campsite. Wood and pieces of thatch roof flew in all directions, creating further pandemonium as the entire village descended into screams of fear and panic. Children were clinging to their mothers as angry men barked at each other, trying to determine the source of all this chaos.
Taking advantage of this confusion was Nathan and Ezra, who was running away from the campsite at top speed. When Vin saw their departure was noticed by a warrior about to throw a spear that would have landed in Nathan’s back, he pulled the trigger and downed the man with one shot. The warrior collapsed with the spear in his hands and Nathan looked over his shoulder briefly to register the shot before looking gratefully in Vin’s direction.
******
The instant Buck Wilmington heard the mortar shells, the pilot of the plane they called Darlin’ Millie, named after his sainted mother, immediately tossed aside the magazine he had been reading and rushed to the cockpit. If he knew his friends at all, when they came running out of the jungle on this strip of cleared land that served as a runaway, they wouldn’t be alone. Slipping into the pilot’s seat, he moved across the controls like a man with intimate knowledge of where everything was after years of practice.
Just like he did with women.
Buck glanced through the cockpit as the sound of mortar fire was followed by gunfire in the distance and tried to glimpse the others emerging from the tree line. He spared the action only a moment because as soon as the engines came to life with a loud roar and the plane’s fuselage began humming with that familiar resonance he knew as well as his own breath, he had other matters to attend. Once the engines had reached crescendo, the sound of mortar and gunfire was eclipsed by the familiar whump whump whump of the propellers on either side of the craft.
Buck wasted no time getting the wheels moving as he directed Millie from where she had been awaiting the others. Directing the nose of the craft towards the length of the makeshift runway, the intensity of the gunfire told him they would be making a hasty escape. As the engines rumbled in patience, Buck continued to stare out of the cockpit window, hoping things had gone as smoothly as they hoped.
Oh, who was he kidding? These things never went according to plan.
The first to emerge from the trees was Ezra and Nathan. Both men were running for dear life and considering the shouts of anger, not to mention gunshots, Buck guessed there was a good reason for that. They were followed by Josiah who had his launcher hanging across his back, same as Vin, who had switched to the Winchester he insisted on mutilating with a saw, every time he got near one. Firing the mare’s leg behind him as he ducked an arrow shot at him.
Everyone except Vin raced into the open door of the plane, practically jumping into the cabin.
“Where’s Chris?” Buck shouted from the cockpit. In truth, Buck knew his old friend could take care of himself, it was the kid that the pilot was more concerned about.
“On his way!” Josiah replied as Vin stood by the door to the plane, waiting for the arrival of their leader and their rookie recruit.
No sooner than Josiah had said those words, Chris Larabee and JD Dunne bolted out of the tree line, running hard against the red dirt. Following too close behind them appeared to be the entire Mangbetu nation, crying bloody murder as they wielded spears and blades. Vin wasted no time opening fire, not aiming at anyone but giving them pause enough for Chris and JD to reach the plane. Vin continued firing, aided by Nathan, who had emerged with a machine gun and was firing above the heads of the natives.
“Come on!” Chris beckoned them once he and JD reached the aircraft.
Wasting no time, they rushed into the plane, with Vin pulling the door close behind him, just in time to hear the impact of spear points against the fuselage, not to mention the roar of Mangbetu closing in on them.
“BUCK! WE ARE LEAVING!” Chris demanded.
“Like a bat out of hell!” Buck shouted with a grin from the cockpit as the plane began to rumble forward picking up momentum as the landscape rolled by the cabin windows.
“Did you get it?” Josiah asked as the aircraft rumbled to safety.
“Yeah,” Chris grinned, lifting the Kpinga for the others to see. The glimmer of jewels encrusting the hilt drew a response from small gasps to light whistles from those present. “All forty thousand dollars of it.”
“Of course, if we simply decided to keep it...” Ezra who could not help himself had to remark.
“We made a deal Ezra,” Chris warned.
“Of course, of course,” Ezra shrugged perfectly aware of how intractable Chris could be about these things. Besides the money was not worth the reputation they would destroy if they were to double cross their client. “I was merely ruminating.”
“Well ruminate after you get a bath,” Vin who was standing next to the southerner remarked. “You smell like soup.”
CHAPTER TWO:
PALOMAS
ALBUQUERQUE
NEW MEXICO - THREE DAYS LATER
The bar was called Paloma’s, named after a fiery Mexican beauty who could stop her husband’s heart with a smile and send cold chills of terror through him when he, unfortunately, inspired her fury. Although she passed a decade before the establishment of the bar, he missed her spitfire temper and chose to name it in homage to the woman who gave him the scar over his forehead after hurling a mug at him.
The bar was very much a throwback to the old days when New Mexico was called the Territory and small towns, now swallowed up by time and the desert, made up much of its landscape. With polished wooden floors, a solid walnut bar counter holding court over the room, and a mixture of seating that included comfortable armchairs and stools, it had a pleasant, welcoming atmosphere. There was enough illumination for clarity but soft enough to provide a smoky haze over the place. In the corner, a Wurlitzer belted out ‘Lulu’s back in Town’ while waitresses sailed across the sea of men carrying drinks.
This was a refuge for men who came not only for the drinking but also for the company.
Three years ago, following the Great Crash of ‘29, Paloma’s owner Roberto was almost in danger of losing the bar and was rescued by a fresh infusion of cash from one of his regulars. For a 49 per cent stake and the agreement to remain a silent partner, Roberto was able to keep the doors open, much to the relief of its patrons. The future of the Paloma was assured with unspoken hopes no other calamity would befall the business to ever endanger its existence again.
“Did you know Roberto was sick Ezra?” JD Dunne, now back in civilisation, looked very much like the college kid he was, dressed in light pants and a shirt, with a sweater vest and two-toned spat shoes, asked Ezra Standish. Ezra, with the rest of the seven, were seated around the table, toasting the man whom they’d learned on their return from Africa, had died of a heart attack during their absence.
“Not at all,” Ezra said sombrely, gazing into the amber cognac in his glass, deep in thought. The Seven’s chief procurer as always looked too well dressed for this establishment. Appearing as if he stepped out of the pages of a magazine, Ezra always wore custom tailored suits, with silk shirts and ornate ties hanging from his neck in half Windsor knots. His waistcoats always stood out against the colour of his suit. Roberto often claimed he told patrons Ezra was some Hollywood movie star who wandered into the place and amused himself when they tried to figure out which one.
Ezra reflected on Roberto, a man who had come to mean so much to them since they began their association four years ago, with his dignified voice and his patrician features, always welcoming patrons with a smile on his face. “I always thought him immortal to tell you the truth.”
“No one’s immortal Ezra,” Josiah frowned, just as saddened by the man’s death from beneath his tweed cap. As always, Josiah wore his favourite Corduroy jacket with a shirt buttoned to the top, with dark pants, never caring for a tie to complete the ensemble. Closer in age to Roberto than most of his friends, the two often shared long talks at the bar about life and the changing world around them. They were two old war horses, trading stories about their past and the women in it. “Not even us.”
“Well hell,” Buck sat up straighter in his seat, stretching the turtleneck he was wearing as he leaned against the leather of the aviator’s jacket draped on the back of his chair. “We know that old boy wouldn’t want us behaving like a bunch of sorry heifers. He’d want us to drink up and remember what a fine man he was.”
The rogue lifted his mug of beer and prompted the group, all save Chris and Vin who were meeting their client to deliver the Kpinga, to raise their glasses and offer Roberto a parting farewell.
“To Roberto!” Nathan declared. “A decent guy who made everyone feel welcome.”
The former medic thought of how Roberto ignored the demands of some patrons who objected to a coloured man drinking in the same place as them. Even though he was dressed in a light suit with bow tie, looking dapper, they stared at him like he was nothing more than just another uppity coloured man. Those who argued the point were thrown out and when Nathan thanked him, Roberto had merely shrugged, indicating it was best he carry out the deed himself because Chris and the others would not have been as forgiving.
“I wonder what’s going to happen to this place now that he’s gone,” JD said to the others.
For once Ezra remained silent because he was Roberto’s secret partner. Three years ago, when the man was on the verge of bankruptcy, Ezra, who had accumulated a stipend from various business ventures decided to offer the bar owner the funds needed to escape his debtors. While Ezra owned 49 per cent of the business, with Roberto gone, he wondered if perhaps he ought to invest further and buy the place outright, if for no other reason than to keep the establishment as it was.
“So, do we have any idea what our illustrious leader has planned for our next jaunt?” Ezra inquired, deciding a change of subject was in order. “I hope it is somewhere with fewer opportunities for my person to become the main course at a local feast.” He shot Nathan a look of accusation.
Nathan picked up his mug and took a sip of his beer. “Oh, come on,” he grinned at the southerner, “it wasn’t that bad.”
“I beg to differ,” Ezra sniffed, still thinking he could smell that awful soup instead of his Blenheim Bouquet cologne when he saw Chris and Vin entering the bar.
Chris Larabee always cut a distinct figure with his favourite black duster worn over his dark suits, with a black fedora perched on his head. In contrast, Vin Tanner looked very much like the rugged Texan he was, wearing his checked shirts and dark jeans, hidden beneath a tan skin coat, with cowboy boots and his favourite hat.
As they approached the table where the rest of the seven were presently seated, Ezra noted the slight frown on Vin’s face while Chris, as usual, remained impassive. Ezra hoped nothing went wrong with the delivery of the Kpinga. He hated to think he’d ruined a good set of clothes for nothing.
“Chris, Vin,” Buck greeted as they reached the table, “we were just toasting Roberto.”
“As we oughta,” Chris remarked as he pulled up a chair and gestured to the passing waiter to bring him and Vin their usual. “He was a good man.”
Indeed, it was Chris who first chose this as their meeting place after he’d mined the five men from across the country when he decided to embark on his new venture. At the time, all of them except for JD were struggling to get by in the wake of the crash because 1931 had been a hard year for everyone. Chris who left his military career in 1930 following the death of his wife Sarah and son Adam, was on his way to becoming a full-blown alcoholic even though Buck had kept him from eating his gun.
A chance meeting with former commanding officer Orin Travis, now Curator of the New Mexico Museum of Antiquities, set him on a new path.
Tracking down his old comrades from K-Troop, the men he served within the 3rd Cavalry Regiment during the war, he found Vin Tanner in Texas, working as a ranch hand, after the Texas Rangers he had been riding with for five years reduced their numbers. Even worse was Nathan Jackson, a respected medic in the trenches of Europe, forced into mopping floors at a hospital in Topeka, Kansas to avoid the bread lines.
Buck who was one of the best Reconnaissance pilots of the Western Front, was flying crop dusters in California. To remain close to his institutionalised sister, Josiah made ends meet as a mechanic at a local garage in Colorado near the state-run facility. Ezra, Chris found in jail, which didn’t really surprise the former cavalry captain. The man’s penchant for scams during their years in the war, not to mention his skill as a conman made incarceration inevitable.
“So, I take it everything progressed as expected Mr Larabee?” Ezra asked, interrupting Chris’s foray into the past.
“Yeah,” Chris replied, meeting the gazes of the men who were looking at him expectantly. “Smooth as silk.” He reached into his duster and withdrew the plain brown envelopes in his inside coat pocket and distributed them appropriately. “Five thousand a piece.”
After almost three years of carrying out jobs of similar risk, everyone at the table except for JD was financially stable enough to see themselves through the decade if they chose to live conservatively and walk away from the life. The money was always divided equally with a portion allocated to pay for their equipment and supplies, which included the fuel for the Darlin’ Millie, the Fokker F20 plane used to ferry them across the world.
“Then why does Vin look like he swallowed a bad clam?” Nathan asked as he slipped his envelope into his jacket without looking at its contents.
Vin scowled at Nathan. “I ain’t looking like anything.” He grumbled, unhappily.
“He’s just sore because he’s going to have to get prettied up tomorrow,” Chris remarked, throwing the sharpshooter a look. “In fact, we all are.”
“We going to a party?” Buck asked, the idea of party meant women and that always had Buck’s unconditional support.
“Something like that,” Chris replied picking up his glass of whiskey when it was served to him. “The Doc invited us to an opening at the museum for their new exhibit. Something called the Heart of Enki. Anyway, it’s a formal thing and its tomorrow night. He asked us all,” he shifted his gaze at Vin, “to come.”
“Chris you know I can’t stand getting into those monkey suits,” Vin complained. “A whole evening of standing around and jawing with strangers.”
“Hard to jaw when the last one of these things you were at, we had to drag you from where you were hiding behind that Egyptian statue.” Nathan pointed out.
“I weren’t hiding,” Vin protested. Actually, he was but they didn’t need to know that.
“Vin you got to learn to appreciate these kinds of parties,” Buck remarked. “You get top shelf women and they’re all prettied up, not to mention....”
“Liquored up,” both Ezra and Josiah said in unison. “Nice Buck, nice.” Josiah frowned.
Ezra found it strange that Doctor Travis would invite them to such a function. While the Curator had given their team its start, the man preferred to keep his treasure hunters away from the faculty. This invitation reeked of an ulterior motive in the gambler’s opinion. “Mr Larabee, do you think that the Doctor might have another agenda for this invitation? It is out of the ordinary, you must admit.”
“I’m almost certain of it Ezra,” Chris replied, once again showing he was well ahead of them. “When I spoke to him on the phone this morning, he seemed like he had something on his mind.”
“Well I guess there’s only one way to find out,” Josiah remarked. “We’re going to a party.”
********
Doctor Orin Travis searched the room for the girl and wondered if she would accept the invitation and attend the opening tonight. Somehow, he suspected not. She was still grieving over William’s death and Orin couldn’t blame her. The relationship between father and daughter had been a thing to envy ever since William had lost his wife Yasmine during childbirth. Raising Alexandra on his own, William was the kind of father Orin had tried to emulate when raising his own daughter Mary.
If she did not attend tonight, he would have to seek her out or better yet send someone to act on his behalf in this matter. With William now gone, he was the last of them and he had better start making plans as to how he was going to deal with the situation.
******
The first place Chris Larabee headed towards after arriving at the Arabian wing of the museum was to head in the direction of the artefact being showcased for the evening. For a change, the museum had acquired the artefact through a legitimate archaeological expedition and Chris was curious to see for himself, what was considered a significant Mesopotamian find. Dressed in the tuxedo he only wore these occasions, he had to admit, he did not have the aversion to tails that Vin seemed to have.
Indeed, as soon as they stepped through the doors of the museum, Vin had been itching to escape and find some unobtrusive corner of the building to hide. Chris had no idea why this surprised him of course. Vin had been forced to learn how to hide from his youth. First, from the, orphanage he escaped from, and later from the authorities at the end of the war when his real age was discovered, and he was still subject to return to that terrible place.
Vin had joined the army and was shipped out to the Western Front at the age of twelve. By the time he arrived in Europe, the war was a year away from seeing its end and there was still plenty of fighting. Chris had been furious at how some recruiter could look the scrawny child and somehow believe him old enough to enlist. Then again, after Chris saw the scars on his body, wondered if the same sentiment that made him ensure Vin remain in the regiment had moved a recruiter in the same way.
Nevertheless, Vin became a member of K Troop, first looking after the horses but eventually graduated into riding with the rest of the cavalry. He was good on a horse but what he did with a Winchester rifle was damn near beautiful. The kid was a natural sharpshooter and when the war’s end approached, he and Buck resolved to keep Vin with them. Chris especially wanted Vin at his side, they shared a connection he didn’t understand, a kinship that was not just fraternal.
Except for the instant they shipped stateside, the authorities swept in and took the boy without Chris realising it until it was all over. For more than a year, Chris did his best to locate the thirteen-year-old boy, aware Vin did not return to the orphanage. Finally, he had no choice but to give up the hunt and returned to his life, praying wherever Vin Tanner was, he was alright.
It was only years later, did Chris receive a letter from Vin who had joined the Texas Rangers, telling Chris he was alright and still alive. Vin had escaped the authorities shortly after they had retaken custody of him and made his way to New Mexico. Somehow, he had become lost in the Indian Reservation occupied by Navajo tribes and instead of ejecting the boy, the Indians had given him sanctuary. Vin spent five years in their company, safe from Federal authorities, and learned everything he could from the Navajo, including their tracking ability.
Emerging from the Reservation, Vin’s skills as a marksman, his ability to track and his expertise on a horse made the Texas Rangers a natural fit. Although Chris wished he had been able to help Vin years before, the young man’s natural resilience made his concern unwarranted. By that point, however, Chris was married with a child on the way and decided if Vin needed help, the young man would simply ask.
He should have known better.
Moving across the marble floor of the wing, he glimpsed the rest of the seven. Ezra was hobnobbing with a group of people, some of which he recognised as faculty from his visits here. While Nathan was engaged in conversation with Doctor Travis. Meanwhile, Josiah was at the bar getting a drink, probably because flutes of champagne were not up to the man’s taste, while Buck was putting his most charming smile forward for a lovely brunette in a sapphire coloured gown with a low back. JD as always was filling up on the free food. The kid had a metabolism like a dozen runaway horses.
Reaching the artefact, he studied it for a moment beneath the harsh lighting and the glass case protecting it on its pedestal. The object was made of brass and gleamed under high polish. The marking was almost certainly Sumerian, the Sasanian period. It was shaped like a diamond with five sides, four of which were hollow and if Chris didn't know better, though it was somehow incomplete.
“It must be a change for you to see something here you and your team didn’t have to acquire.” A decidedly feminine voice said behind him.
Chris straightened up and turned around, about to respond when he found himself staring at what had to be the most dazzling female he had ever seen. She stared at him with captivating blue eyes, long golden hair, held in place by a brocade pin that glittered against her already lustrous locks. She was dressed in a gown of light pink satin which clung to every inch of her perfect figure. His throat went dry for a moment, as he collected himself.
“Collecting antiquities isn’t a monopoly Miss...” Chris returned smoothly, his eyes drinking her in.
“You can call me Mary,” she gave him a coy smile. “And you’re Chris Larabee.”
“Nice to meet you, Mary,” Chris replied, gesturing to a waiter walking by with a tray full of drinks to make a detour their way. “So, you’re interested in the Heart?” He shifted his blue eyes in the direction of the gleaming object beneath the glass case.
“In a manner of speaking,” she said smoothly, and Chris thought he could listen to that voice all day, and night if he could remember how this whole charm thing worked. It had been a good while since he’d had to dust it off. “I’m covering it for the Albuquerque Journal, I’m a reporter.”
Aw hell, Chris groaned inwardly. A news reporter. He knew the type. They were generally pains in the asses and Chris took a moment to debate whether she was worth the trouble. “Sounds like interesting work.” He offered neutrally, still undecided and having to admit her perfume was making astonishing arguments in her favour.
“Well not as interesting as what you and your team encounter frequently I am told,” she eyed him with amusement, aware he was somewhat taken back by her profession. Most men were. “In fact, I heard through my sources you recently acquired the Kpinga of Creation for an unknown buyer.”
Chris frowned, not at all liking the fact she was privy to that information. How the hell had she found out? “No comment.” He said plainly, his blue eyes issuing her a silent warning not to proceed any further.
Mary could care less. “I don’t suppose you’d let me know who your unknown buyer was...?
“No comment,” Chris decided, he wasn’t about to be interrogated and started to draw away when he heard Doctor Orin Travis’ voice.
“Chris, glad you could make it. You’ve met Mary?” His former commanding officer declared with a smile.
“You know each other?” Chris’s eyes flared as he stared at her in accusation.
“Of course,” Orin Travis looked affectionately at the golden-haired siren. “She’s my daughter.”
Daughter? Chris winced inwardly. It was official. God hated him.
******
Pulling the hood over her head, Aisha stared into the sky and saw a thousand stars glittering in beautiful splendour against the dark indigo canvas. This land was so much like her home, she felt a hint of homesickness as she felt its dry heat against her skin. When this task was done, and she could leave this accursed country behind, perhaps she would return home and spend some time there. Of course, she knew it was not possible, not when there was so much to be done. Levelling the hood of her cloak over her head so that her face would be concealed in shadow, she looked over her shoulder.
The men in the alley were waiting for the word to proceed. Across the street, the museum lights were a beacon, drawing them forward. Cars rolled to a stop in front of the main entrance, depositing the rich in their expensive clothes and jewellery onto the red carpet leading up the steps. They emerged languidly, drawn to the festivities already begun. Standing over the men like the Sphinx watching over the Valley of the Kings, Kreston’s fierce glare ensured they showed no signs of impatience.
They were Children of Erran and they knew discipline.
“Come,” Aisha said looking at Krestos. “It’s time. No one believes a museum would be the target of an attack so there is no constabulary present.”
“With all those weak Americans, I doubt we will encounter much resistance.” Krestos commented the cruel looking dagger at his waist, waiting to be blooded.
“As per my brother’s orders,” she said. “We will leave no one alive.”
CHAPTER THREE:
SUGAR BABIES
Refusing to let anyone find him and drag him into the party, Vin Tanner took himself to the roof of the museum, convinced neither Buck nor Nathan would be determined enough to find him up there. It was bad enough he started to get heart palpitations when he and Chris were walking up the red-carpeted steps leading into the museum, surrounded by the fancy folk in their tuxedos and gowns, looking resplendent. He could imagine nothing worse than trying to make conversation with them. Though he barely had an education and was by no means stupid, Vin recognised his limitations.
As it was, he was near close to madness when Chris released him to his own devices, probably exasperated by the complaining Chris had been forced to endure on the trip there. Vin wanted to free himself of the neckband threatening to strangle him. The tuxedo he was wearing was one he was forced to buy for the last one of these things Chris made him attend, and he briefly entertained the notion of setting fire to the ensemble to avoid them in future.
Besides, Chris had Buck and Ezra to keep him company during these events, they didn’t need him.
Reaching the top of the grey-walled staircase leading to the roof, Vin opened the door and stepped outside into the darkness. Above him, the glitter of stars in the night sky, as well as the balmy breeze moving across his skin, immediately relaxed him. He had no sooner crossed the threshold, when he saw a lone figure seated on the brick edging, taking in the view of the city surrounding the museum. With his excellent night vision and the presence of enough light from the full moon and the floors beneath the roof, his breath simply caught at what he saw.
With wavy black hair swaying slightly in the breeze across her bare shoulders of golden skin. Her lips were so full and luscious, they were almost ripe. Vin yearned to taste them until he was utterly sated. She had the loveliest face he had ever seen and the white halter neck gown she wore, clung to her body, accentuating every sensuous curve he wanted to chart. She was almost ethereal in her beauty, wearing such profound sorrow in her face, Vin thought it was just plain wrong for her to feel that way without someone holding her in their arms.
She jumped slightly at the sight of him, startled by the realisation she was no longer alone and stared in his direction.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered an apology. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just came up for some air. I can leave if you want.” Still, Vin made no attempt to retreat, because he really hoped she might let him stay.
Disarmed by his explanation, she relaxed a little and replied. “It’s alright. I needed some fresh air myself. You can stay if you want.”
Secretly cheering in triumph at this, Vin replied with a smile. “Thanks.”
She gave him one in return and despite the sadness, he could see in her face, his pulse still quickened at her smile. Vin approached her cautiously, wondering what she was doing up here all alone. A woman like this was too pretty to be hiding away but then again, there was real sorrow on her face and it reflected at him in her warm, brown eyes.
“Tell the truth, I was trying to hide out up here,” Vin volunteered as he sat on the edging next to her and was pleased when she did not move away. “I hate parties with people I don’t know. Only here because my boss is a mean ol’ cuss that likes to make me suffer.”
“Really?” She smiled wider at that. “I’m not a fan of them either. I’m only here because I have to meet someone in the museum and I didn’t care much for the crowds. There’s nothing worse than trying to make conversation with blue bloods.”
“Yeah, they’re a little too fancy for me,” he admitted and hoped whomever she was meeting here, wasn’t a date. “You meeting your fella or something?”
Inwardly, he groaned. Subtle Tanner, real subtle.
Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice. “I’m meeting an old friend of my father’s.” When she spoke that last word, her bottom lip quivered, and Vin knew immediately, the reason for her sadness. The man was gone and by the intensity of pain he saw in her eyes, he guessed not too long ago.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
She raised her eyes to him, surprised at his ability to guess by that one word, the source of her anguish. Studying him for the first time, she was drawn immediately to the cobalt coloured eyes drinking her in. He was handsome, almost bordering on beautiful but there was enough ruggedness in him to leave no doubt of his masculinity. He appeared very dapper in his tuxedo even if he seemed terribly unassuming and she suspected a little shy.
“Thank you,” she replied, almost as quietly, blinking away the moisture in her eyes. “I’m still trying to get used to it.”
For once, Vin thought the stupid handkerchief poking out of the top pocket of this monkey suit had some use and he fished it out and offered it to her. She accepted it without a word, lifting it to her lovely face before dabbing away at the tears that formed in her eyes.
When she composed herself, she handed it back to him. “Thank you. Is your boss going to be angry you’ve sneaked away like this?”
“Nah,” Vin shrugged. “Once he got a look at the free booze, he forgot all about me. Prohibition was real tough on him, he still hasn’t gotten over it.”
She managed a laugh at that and Vin thought she was radiant when she did so and wanted to listen to that sound all day. “I’m Vin,” he introduced himself. “Vin Tanner.”
“Alexandra Styles,” she offered him her hand, “but you can call me Alex.”
Vin took her hand and immediately felt electricity in her touch. Her eyes shifted to his for a moment and Vin knew instantly she felt it too. A lightning bolt passed through his skin, riding the currents in his veins to pierce his heart in an instant. For a second, they just stared at each other and the walls between them became soft and translucent as if some cosmic mechanism knew the barrier was not needed.
She withdrew her hand and Vin could see she was affected by the slight shift of colour in her skin, unnoticeable to most but he had spent enough time in the company of Indians to recognise the signs of a blush. The thought made him smile, glad he wasn’t the only one who felt his world had just suddenly turned upside down.
“I suppose if we’re not going to go down there,” Alex said turning away from him and revealing a previously unnoticed clutch purse lying against the brick. “We should at least eat something.” Snapping it open, she reached inside and produced a small box of Sugar Babies. I call this hideout food.”
Vin laughed, liking the absurdity of it as he watched her pull the tabs on the box open, before tilting it in his direction. “Finally, some real food.”
“Oh yeah, I should have brought a Cola but there was nowhere to stash it in this dress.”
Thank Christ for that, he thought because she looked perfect in that gown. “I wish I have known coming up here. I would have hidden a couple of beers away for us.”
“Now I could use one of those,” she admitted as she popped a sugar baby into her mouth.
“Really?” Vin stared at her a moment before clearing his throat, never being able to do this well and wishing he’d paid more attention to Buck Wilmington when the man was on the make. “We could leave here and go get a drink?”
His nervousness while making the invitation was so endearing, Alex could not help but smile. In fact, she was rather, surprised by how much his presence receded the despair she felt. “Well I need to go see Professor Travis but after...”
“You know Professor Travis....” Vin started to say when suddenly, he caught sight of a group of people crossing the street, heading towards the front door of the museum. Even from five floors up, Vin knew they weren’t the rich folk or faculty types attending the party this evening. They were all dressed in the same red robes, with a decidedly Oriental cut to them. The closest comparison he could make was a resemblance to some of the traditional clothes he’d seen worn by the Turks during the war.
“Who are they?” Alex asked, observing the odd cadre of red-robed figures heading towards the museum, uncertain what she was seeing but judging by the suddenly serious expression on his face, they were anyone she would wish to meet. Suddenly, the shy and unassuming demeanour he projected earlier, vanished and he was someone different. He was someone who surveyed the scene like a hunter, supremely confident.
“I don’t know,” Vin said quickly. “But they’re armed.” They were carrying an assortment of blades, not just knives but scimitars and were heading straight for the museum. Worse than that, there was at least a dozen of them and Vin had a sneaking suspicion, they would make short work of the security guards in the building.
“What do we do?” She asked worriedly, guessing by the tone of his voice, he might be someone who knew what he was doing.
“Come on,” he took her hand without thinking twice and scanned the top of the roof, sighting the fire escape almost immediately at the edge of it. “We’re getting down to the street,” he said as he started leading her there. “If we go through the building we might get caught in whatever’s about to happen. You call the law and I’m going in there.”
“What?” She halted in her high heels. “You could get hurt.”
“It’s okay,” he gave her a little smile trying to assuage the fear he saw in her lovely face. “I won’t be alone.”
****
“I’m so glad you two finally met,” Professor Orin Travis, who once commanded a regiment in the Great War, but now presided over the New Mexico Museum of Antiquities, said with a smile as he saw Chris Larabee eyeing his daughter Mary with suspicion. Considering what Mary had said privately about the treasure hunters he employed to collect artefacts from around the world, he imagined the conversation preceding his arrival would not have been a pleasant one.
“I’ve been looking forward to it,” Mary said to Chris with a smile, finding the man quite intriguing, even if his reputation in archaeological circles bordered between grave robber and heroic.
“You have?” Chris eyed her suspiciously, uncertain if that was a compliment or not.
“Yes, dad has been talking so much about you, I was frankly quite curious,” she offered her father a little smile, while the Professor eyed her with knowing smirk. He knew when she was baiting her hook.
“Nothing to know Mary,” Chris said smoothly, curious as to what Orin said about him and his team. They had been friends since the war and Chris would always feel kindly to the man who gave his life purpose when it could have so easily gone bad, following Sarah and Adam’s death. Travis had given not just him, but the rest of his friends from K Troop a new lease on life.
“I beg to differ. I find your adventures very exciting,” She looked at him and Chris swore she was batting her lashes at him in preparation for some terrible thing he could not see until it was too late. “Actually, I was wondering if I could accompany you on your next expedition.”
Chris who had chosen that moment to take a sip of champagne, choked.
While Mary stiffened in annoyance at the reaction, the Professor only stifled a smirk and wondered if he ought to take a step back to escape the tidal wave of feminist outrage about to come down on Mr Larabee.
“No,” was all Chris could manage when he composed himself. “Not a chance in hell.”
“Any why not?” Mary demanded, her cheeks reddening in indignation. “I’ve travelled to war zones Mr Larabee, I am certain I can hold my own during one of your little expeditions.”
“Little?” Chris stared at her. “Where exactly do you think we go? This isn’t a trip to Bloomingdales you know...”
“Mr Larabee that is sex....”
“Mary, Chris,” Orin decided to intervene because there were too many sharp objects in this wing to allow this conversation to progress any further. “I did ask Chris here for a business matter, so perhaps we should discuss this subject at another time.”
“Dad you are deflecting.” Mary declared.
“No, he’s saving your ass,” Chris deadpanned and then winced because it was not appropriate to speak to a woman that way in front of her father.
Whatever Orin might have thought was interrupted by the sudden eruption of screams of women from the other side of the room. Chris immediately followed the sound of the commotion and saw the arrival of a dozen or so strangers in crimson robes, carrying cruel looking eastern blades. The screams had come because the first thing they had done upon entering the room, was to kill the security guard on watch. Kill might have been too light a word. Behead was probably more accurate Chris thought as he saw the headless corpse lying against the marble floor and God only knew where the head had gone.
Chris immediately searched the place for his men. Buck, Ezra, JD, Josiah and Nathan came into view, scattered across the room. None of them were armed, save maybe Ezra, but it appeared their intruders were only carrying blades and that was something a bunch of ex-cavalrymen could deal with. And they had better do it fast because judging by the way these robed intruders were behaving, slashing and hacking away with absolutely no impunity, Chris guessed quickly they intended on killing everyone here.
“Mary, Professor,” Chris turned to them. “Is there another exit out of this place?”
“Yes,” Orin nodded quickly.
“Get everyone you can through that exit,” Chris ordered. “I’m guessing if they haven’t sealed off the doors yet, they will.”
With that Chris left them just in time to see Buck entering the fray, using a chair to fend off an attacker coming at him with a viciously curved blade. The big man who towered over his opponent, had no difficulty driving the robed assailant backwards with the chair he was carrying, hindering the sword by the steel frame. Seeing their companion was encountering resistance, another robed figure closed in on Buck, intending to get around him. Fortunately, JD was there at the pilot’s side, tossing a stone bust from its pedestal that landed on the attacker’s side sending him sprawling.
Chris wondered as the thing shattered on the floor if JD had any idea he just destroyed a three-thousand-year-old statue.
A sharp scream caught his attention, making Chris turn away from Buck and JD only to see a man staggering backwards after one of the intruders had run him through with a scimitar. As he crashed into the floor, the intruder advanced on the woman beside him, whose face was contorted in anguish implying a personal connection, a wife perhaps. Fury bubbling inside of him, Chris picked up a bottle on the table he passed by and came up behind the son of a bitch, smashing the bottle hard against the intruder’s skull. He went down without any sound except glass shattering. Chris picked up the weapon in the murderer’s hand and turned back to the fray.
Elsewhere, Ezra Standish was armed. He didn’t go anywhere without his derringer and while the weapon contained only two bullets, it would serve. He looked across the room and saw Nathan who himself, was handy with blades, flip one of the robed assailants over his shoulder, the sudden impact against its legs, collapsing the table he landed on. Ezra’s eyes widened seeing one of the brigands closing in on the medic from behind and without thinking twice, the gambler unleashed the derringer and promptly blew a hole in the man’s head. Blood splattered across the column and the sound of the gunshot, the equalizer in any sword fight, brought the entire room to a halt.
All eyes turned to him, including those belonging to a behemoth that stood almost a head taller than Buck, armed with a scimitar, making a beeline for him. For some reason, Ezra had the feeling that the bullet was going to have all the effect of tossing a baked bean at a charging rhinoceros.
He took aim again, hoping that a well-placed bullet would put down the man but as he fired, the enemy moved with lightning-fast reflexes, despite his size. The bullet smashed into a column, sending chips of mortar in all directions before the man, whose dress reminded Ezra of an Arabian genie, loomed over the gambler with nothing less than menace in his obsidian sculpted face
“I do not suppose we can discuss this matter,” Ezra asked, trying not to gulp at the size of him.
“It would be a short conversation,” Krestos replied, his voice gravelly.
“I feared that might be your response,” Ezra remarked and threw a punch which the man caught easily in his meaty fist and began to squeeze, crushing fingers whose dexterity the gambler would miss. While the derringer did not hold any bullets, the weapon was still solid enough to be useful. Smashing the thing against the behemoth’s jaw, the steel was enough to make him feel it, and Ezra wrestled his hands-free, just in time to see Josiah barrelling into the enemy.
The one-time seminary student who found it hard to turn the other cheek, slammed into Ezra’s attacker, using his considerable bulk to drive both of them into the buffet table, upending everything on it with a loud crash. Ezra moved to intervene, certain Josiah was going to need help. He searched for a weapon and found a tall, light stand and prepared to use it when suddenly, another robed assailant came rushing out at him. Bracing himself to fend off the business end of a scimitar, suddenly a drink card rolled unexpectedly in front of him and toppled the man over.
Turning towards the direction of where the untimely assistance had come, Ezra saw a petite redhead, with copper coloured locks and the most astonishing emerald coloured eyes, giving him a wink before he heard movement behind him and turned his head, anticipating of an attack. As it turned out, it was Mr Larabee going blade to blade with one of their intruders. Unfortunately, when he turned back to the woman, she was gone.
********
Reaching the street, Vin and Alex could hear the commotion emanating from inside the museum, in particular, the screams. Unfortunately, there was no comforting sound of sirens whining in the night which meant, no one had yet to raise the alarm or were able to do so. Wasting no time, the sharpshooter made his way to Chris’s parked car. Even as they made their way to the parking lot, Vin was searching for a phone booth and could not see one in sight.
“What are we doing here?” Alex asked as she followed Vin to the rear of the car, struggling to keep up on her heels.
Vin did not answer until he opened the trunk and what was in it was self-evident. Helping himself to the shotgun and ammo, one of the small selection of weapons Chris kept in his car, he straightened up to see Alex staring at him in suspicion.
“What exactly do you do for a living?”
“We’re treasure hunters,” Vin said hastily, going to the front of the car and pulling the door open.
“That’s a real job?” She stared at him as Vin popped open the glove box and found Chris’s revolver and spare shells.
“Real enough,” Vin replied and straightened up to face her. “Here.” He took off his coat and covered her shoulders. “Go see if you can find a telephone and get the cops here. I’m going back in there.”
Her earlier suspicion now gave way to concern. “But...”
“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. “We still gotta get that drink.”
Vin started to draw away when he suddenly felt her tug at his arm. He had no sooner turned back to her when he found himself on the receiving end of a soft, tender kiss of farewell. For a few seconds, the world was forgotten and all he could feel was the silk of her lips and her scent threatening to cloud whatever sense he had. Fortunately, before it could make him completely useless to Chris and the others, she pulled away.
“Be safe” she softly”
Grinning as he pulled away, Vin felt like he could take on the world after that kiss. “I gotta, we still have to finish those sugar babies.”
CHAPTER FOUR:
UNEXPECTED RESISTANCE
It had been almost seventeen years since Chris Larabee had last held a cavalry sabre in his hand but it was good to know he hadn’t lost his touch, even if his weapon at present was an Arabian scimitar. Fighting one of the robed assailants who was intending on slaughtering yet another innocent guest of the museum, it took him only a few seconds for old habits to kick in and he was giving as good as he got.
Defending himself, he blocked the attacking blade and used his physical strength to shove his opponent backwards, across the floor. Around them, pandemonium continued and Chris hoped the others were holding their own. They were outnumbered by these robed devils who were not here to take hostages if the bodies piling up on the floor were any indication.
Ducking as the enemy swung his blade high, Chris dodged the swipe easily and took advantage of his opponent’s wild swing to plant a foot against the man’s knee. He went down hard, landing on the marble tile with enough force to groan in pain. Chris didn’t waste time with the formalities and immediately swung the scimitar, a most unforgiving weapon when wielded correctly. The slice across the man’s throat ended their duel once and for all as the severed jugular vein spurted blood in thick, fast flowing rivulets. Shock filled his face as he clutched his throat, his eyes meeting Chris’s briefly at the dying to come.
Not bothering to see if the man was capable of offering any further threat, Chris looked around and saw his comrades were still on their feet. Josiah and Ezra were collectively battling a giant who stood taller than Buck, while Nathan, JD and his oldest friend were defending the museum guests unable to reach the alternate exit to make their escape. In fact, as he looked over his shoulder at the guests who were heading in that direction, Chris caught sight of something else amidst the insanity around him.
A woman was walking towards the display and judging by her attire, she wasn’t one of the guests. With the hood of her cloak hanging behind her, she was Arabian, with olive skin and dark hair. She walked across the floor unconcerned by the chaos taking place around her, heading straight for the exhibit that was the reason for this entire gathering. Chris saw her approaching the glass showcase, her expression determined and immediately deduced the reason for this carnage was the Heart.
Without thinking twice, Chris crossed the space between them, determined to stop her from doing what he was certain she was about to. He reached her as she struck the glass with what appeared to be a small rock hammer and shattered it. Fragments rained down around the bronzed artefact as the sharp, crashing sound became lost in the screams, the clanging of blades against makeshift weapons and breaking furniture.
Chris came up behind her and grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around before she could reach a hand laden with bangles and ornate rings on the fingers, to steal her prize. She was exotic and beautiful but her brown eyes stared at him with clear menace. Despite the interruption to her act of thievery, she showed no signs of fear at his presence.
“Who the hell are you?” Chris demanded, his hand fastening onto her shoulder.
Suddenly, moving with far more reflexes than he gave her credit, she upturned her palm in front of him and blew something powdery into his face. Chris pulled back to avoid the pink cloud but he wasn’t fast enough and whatever he breathed in, was enough to disorientate him immediately as the room around him began to spin. He tried to regain his balance but even the floor seemed to become fluid, the tile swirling around his ankles while the serrated edging suddenly looked like sharp teeth.
He raised his head and tried to focus, aware she was coming at him with a jambiya, a curved eastern blade, but his ability to defend himself was lost when everything about him spinning, with her approach being the only constant. Raising his blade to try and defend himself, he saw her lips part in laughter, absolutely confident he was no threat to her. Her laughter sounded like the warning drums of doom. She was going to kill him and Chris had a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t going to be able to stop her from doing it.
“Hey, that’s not very nice!” A new voice spoke suddenly, smooth and silky, dragging across his skin like satin.
The woman turned around and Chris saw her head snap back as she caught a punch squarely in the face. She stumbled backwards, the jambiya flying out of her hands, sliding across the floor after it touched the ground. Standing in front of him, was Mary Travis, her fist balled. Her eyes touched his and Chris swore he saw a look of concern before her attention return to the matter at hand.
The other woman shook her head, trying to clear the effect of the punch and rushed at Mary, even as Chris dropped to his knees. He opened his mouth to warn Mary but the blond who was apparently no longer in heels, hiked up the skirt of her dress, showing dynamite legs by the way, and threw a powerful sidekick that send the other woman sprawling. Dropping her skirt, Mary raised her fists and Chris realised, she may actually know how to fight. Even in his disorientation, one thought crossed his mind.
There was going to be no living with her after this.
The woman came at Mary again but this time, Mary did not have to fend her off alone. JD who had been across the room had seen Chris in trouble and reacted immediately, running into the fray without a thought. The young man grabbed a drinks cart and shoved it at the woman, mostly because he had no stomach to use his fists on her. She let out an indignant cry as she leapt out of the way, before it crashed into a column scattering glasses and bottles across the floor.
“Watch out!” Mary called out to the young man. “She’s got some kind of powder!”
JD nodded and immediately reached for his pocket pulling out a handkerchief and tying it around his face, looking like a bank robber. The woman realising, she was at a disadvantage hollered for help, drawing the attention of her robed comrades in their direction. Meanwhile, Mary had turned back to Chris, grabbing a pitcher of water from one of the still standing tables and hurried to the leader of the Seven. Without warning, she threw the entire contents at his face. If only she remembered there was ice in it.
“Fuck!” He cursed, pelted in the face with ice cubes as well as being soaked to the skin.
“Sorry, but you need to snap out of it!” She shook him by the shoulder. “They’re here for the Heart!”
Chris blinked and wiped the water from his face, the irritation at being splashed was washed away by the clarity it left behind. The cold water had given him the shock to the system he needed and he got to his feet, shaking away the last of the disorientation to see JD jumping back to avoid being disembowelled by one of the robed attackers, armed with a scimitar. Meanwhile, the woman was making her way towards the showcase again, determined to get the artefact.
“Get the heart!” He ordered Mary. “I’ll deal with this.”
“Right,” she nodded and hurried away from him, running in her stockinged feet towards the ruined showcase.
“Stand aside,” the woman ordered when Chris confronted her, mindful of JD’s situation. “The Heart belongs to us.”
She raised her hand but before she could repeat her action of drugging him again, Chris grabbed her wrist and yanked her forward. Before she could do anything to stop him, he slammed his forehead against her and knocked her out cold. She slumped to the floor soundlessly.
“Not today,” Chris said to her and went to help JD.
*****
Elsewhere Josiah barely avoided being cut in half by the scimitar wielded by the tall, monolith of a man coming at him. Despite the man’s bulk, he moved fast and Josiah had to admit, having some difficulty in staying away from him. The last swipe had cut through the fabric of his shirt until the former seminary student felt the blade scrape against his skin. Ezra was making a valiant effort offering the man a distraction, jabbing the business end of a light stand at him, using the jagged edges of the bulb still attached to it, as a kind of spear.
The man grabbed the thin neck of the stand and lifted Ezra of his feet, before swinging him across the floor. The gambler slammed against a column and Josiah winced hearing the pop in the man’s shoulder. Ezra uttered a cry of pain, compelling Josiah to grab a chair and fling it at the big man. The enemy turned just as the piece of furniture came at him and slashed at the chair, halting its advance with a clang of metal. He swatted kicked the chair aside and rushed Josiah, wrapping thick arms around Josiah’s waist and lifting the one time would be preacher off his feet, until Josiah’s boots dangled off the ground.
“I will snap you in half for interfering with the will of Erran!” He growled.
“Now that’s unfair,” Josiah grunted, feeling the pain as his kidneys were crushed against his spine. “I would never interfere in anyone’s spiritual beliefs!” As he uttered those words, he brought his head down against the man’s nose and felt bone snap.
Krestos felt the pain radiating across his face and released the infidel as he reeled in pain. This entire situation had gone badly. They had entered this place expecting no resistance from the soft-bellied, rich infidels who were indulging in their decadence while lording over the plunder of other civilisations. However, they were not only encountering resistance but formidable combatants who had killed many of their numbers. Worse than that, he could not see Aisha and knew if any mischief fell upon the Shah’s sister, his rage would be murderous.
Suddenly the booming sound of a shotgun burst over the already deafening rumble of chaos inside the room. Josiah who had dropped to his knees as his opponent retreated from the shattered nose, saw Vin Tanner running the room, a shotgun leading the way. The sound that captured all their attention was one of the robed figures getting in the way of a shotgun blast. The force of it threw the man a few paces across the room, crashing into a table amidst the scream of the woman who had taken refuge beneath it.
Putting down the assailant had given Nathan enough breathing room to reach Vin who immediately handed the medic a revolver, no doubt from the arsenal they all knew was stashed in the trunk of Chris Larabee’s black Hudson Essex Terraplane. No sooner than Nathan had the weapon, the assailants began to scatter and the tall black man, Josiah had been tussling with, who made him feel quite puny, recovered enough to realise the odds were rapidly shifting out of the intruders’ favour.
He seemed to scan the area and rested his gaze on a woman, who was starting to get on her feet where she had been lying on the floor a second earlier. Nearby Chris and JD were fighting a group of robed figures even as gunfire opened. The enemy growled in fury, ignoring his bleeding nose and grabbing the sword that had fallen away from his hands, prepared to cut to pieces anyone who approached. Ezra who was still leaning against the column that gave him his dislocated shoulder made some effort to pick up the light stand but was hampered by his injury.
“Chris!” Josiah called out in warning across the way.
Vin who was reloading when he heard Josiah’s cry, shifted his gaze sharply towards Chris Larabee who at the moment was battling it out with one of the intruders, going blade for blade, while JD was fending off another attacker with the broken leg of a table. While the younger man was fighting off the ferocious attack admirably, it didn’t take any genius for Vin to see he was a little out of his depth, unaccustomed to fighting this way. JD who was mostly into book learning until the Professor signed him up with them, did not have the experience to fight off a more experienced opponent indefinitely. The kid was great with a gun but hand to hand was something he was still learning from Buck and the others.
Behind him, the crack of gunfire was scattering the enemy and Vin looked over his shoulder to see some of them in retreat, but not all. Jumping over a downed chair, Vin landed next to another body and felt his stomach hollow at the victim, a young woman hacked to death on the ground. It made him doubly glad he sent Alex to get the law. Once again, the memory of her kiss flashed in his mind and Vin brushed it aside abruptly before it got him killed.
One of the robe intruders got in his way as Vin reloaded, bringing down a scimitar against his skull. Vin used the barrel of the shotgun to block the strike while at the same time, kicking out his foot landing on the man’s sternum, shoving him backwards. No sooner than he went reeling, Vin lowered his gun, snapped the barrel back in place and pulled the trigger. The man died when he landed on the floor. The powerful blast of the shotgun jolted the remaining assailants into realising they were now at a disadvantage.
“TARAJUE!*”
The leader, the tall man that stood as solidly as ebony, shouted on top of his lungs and while Vin didn’t exactly know what was being said, guessed a general retreat might have been called. The enemy hurried to a woman who was getting to her feet. Instead of leaving, however, appeared more interested in what had been in the broken showcase. Fortunately, it appeared whatever the thing contained was gone because he saw the anger in their faces at its absence.
****
“Are you alright?” Krestos asked with concern, seeing the blood on the Ameera’s face and flinching because of it. The Shah was not going to be pleased to know his younger sister was hurt.
“I am fine,” she said abruptly and saw the bodies strewn across the floor. There were too many of their own lay dead and the Heart was gone. There was no time to search for it now. Not when the cursed infidels who had involved themselves in their business had intervened to such disastrous results. “We must leave. We’ll find another way to retrieve the Heart.” Aisha was certain it had been taken by the golden-haired witch who attacked her like a savage brute.
Another gunshot drew their attention and Aisha knew getting through these men, now that they were armed would only cause more of the Erran their lives. Reaching into her cloak, she produced a glass orb and shot Krestos a look. “Be ready to move!”
Aware of how useful her concoctions could be, he nodded in understanding and gave her leave to proceed, confident he would act when she gave them the opening. She flung the orb against the floor, where it shattered spectacularly, momentarily eclipsing the gunfire. As it broke, the grains of purple within when exposed to the air, turned into a cloud of thick, blanketing smoke. The cloud spread out across the floor and throughout the room, obscuring everything in sight. More screams followed and brought an abrupt halt to the gunfire.
“TARAJUE!*” Krestos shouted again.
It was time to leave.
***
Alexandra Styles had managed to get to a phone booth where she made the frantic call to the police and reported that the New Mexico Museum of Antiquities was under attack by a group of unknown assailants. Once she completed the task Vin Tanner set for her, she walked back to the Hudson parked across the street from the building, still wearing the coat he had so gallantly offered her before he ran off to confront those men.
As she pulled the tuxedo jacket closer to her, she took in the slight fragrance of his aftershave against the fabric and for some reason, it brought a little smile to her lips, which did not at all fit the melancholy by which she began the evening. When she first came to the museum to meet Orin, she had done so because he was one of her father’s oldest friends and Alex had a friendship with Mary, Orin’s daughter. In her youth, Alex and her father had spent summers with the Professor and his family. His wife Evelyn, was always kind to Alex, knowing it was hard to grow up motherless.
If it were not for that precious relationship, Alex would have stayed home, wallowing in her grief during her brief sojourn from medical school which she was on the cusp of completing. She had been so looking forward to begining her internship with her father at his practice, but now that dream was gone. Just like he was.
The pain of his loss was near unbearable until the chance meeting with the young man on the roof tonight, with his cobalt coloured eyes and shy smile and went from unassuming to confident at the drop of a hat. When he rushed off to face God only knew what, Alex had kissed him on impulse, mostly because it felt like the proper thing to do when a man was about to go off and face danger, to give him a kiss of luck but it didn’t feel like luck.
It felt almost like love.
Did such things actually happen? Was it possible to fall for someone after less than an hour in his company, while sharing sugar babies under the moonlight? Things like that only happened in the movies between Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, not ordinary people like her. Alex pondered these things as she reached the car, prepared to wait as he ordered and figure out her topsy-turvy feelings then.
However as she neared the vehicle, she saw a great deal of activity taking place on the previously quiet street. People were running out of the building, heading for their cars, from the rear of the building, the fright in their face obvious. She spied some of them were bleeding and immediately her doctor’s instincts, okay not quite doctor’s instinct but close enough, kicked in and she started to cross the street when a black car she hadn’t noticed following her silently, sped up.
The vehicle came to a stop beside her and Alex paused a moment, wondering what was happening when the door swung open. Before she could withdraw, a red-robed figure emerged and immediately caught her arm, allowing her to go no further. Another emerged after him and the second assailant circled her body before cupping her mouth with a large hand, cutting off her indignant cry.
Not about to go without a fight, she struggled and fought but had not enough strength to break free. Within seconds, she was forced inside the vehicle, disappearing from view before the door slammed shut and the dark Cadillac sped away into the night. All that was left was her clutch, splayed open when it hit the tar road.
The box of sugar babies, spilling unto the empty street where she had been.
*Retreat
CHAPTER FIVE:
THE PILLARS
In the aftermath of the fighting, the carnage left behind reminded Chris all too much of the battlefields of Europe, with bodies strewn across mortar mangled earth. Here, they lay across the marble block, intertwined within the tables and chairs laid out for the party as well as the exhibits on display, many of which were lying on the floor, broken and dented. Fortunately, most of the dead belonged to the red-robed attackers who instigated the violence in the first place.
Still, there were enough innocent victims to go around and Chris’s jaw clenched when he saw the museum guests who had come here for a night out, decked out in their best clothes, unaware they were wearing their death shrouds for the evening. Remembering how callously they were cut down made Chris wished they had killed all those red-robed bastards instead of allowing them to escape. He spared them a moment of consideration before his mind turned its attention to the fates of his men.
Surveying the room quickly, Chris felt a surge of relief seeing his friends alive, even if it looked like Ezra was hurt. The gambler was sitting at the base of a column, his shoulder angled oddly enough for Chris to tell immediately it was dislocated or worse. Despite Ezra’s hatred of exposing his emotions, except maybe when he was stewing in a cooking pot or about to lose his virtue to a tribal chief, the pain on his face was obvious.
“Nathan,” Chris called out to the medic, who was systematically going from body to body, hoping there was someone still left alive for him to administer medical attention.
Nathan lifted his head immediately at Chris’s call and then saw where the leader of the seven was staring. Ezra’s prone condition made Nathan forget all about his inspection, with the former medic side-stepping the bodies around him to reach the southerner. Nathan liked it even less when he saw the gambler’s normally cool facade cracked by a grimace of pain.
Meanwhile, Buck strode towards Chris, deciding there was no one left alive and was furious at the unnecessary violence displayed here. “Who the hell was these guys?” Buck demanded when he reached Chris.
“I have no idea,” Chris shrugged, just as puzzled by the identity of these assailants as his oldest friend. Dropping to a knee next to one of the men lying on the floor, Chris rolled him over. He had been lying face down in a crimson pool of blood, his lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. Judging by the size of the ragged hole in the centre of his forehead, the kill shot had come from a small bullet, most likely a derringer. No doubt, this man had met his fate at the end of Ezra’s carefully concealed weapon.
Studying the man closely, he noted like all the robed attackers, he too was Arabian in descent with his tanned olive skin and brown eyes. The robes, although oriental in origin were nothing like the traditional garb worn by some of the Turks during the war. Furthermore, the weapons they were carrying appeared as if they originated from another century, with their mixture of curved blades and scimitars. As the rest of the seven converged around him, Chris noted something else, this time on the man’s hand. Lifting the cooling flesh for a closer look, Chris leaned in and studied the symbol tattooed on the man’s skin. It was a lion encircled in a black ring.
“What is it?” Buck asked, taking note of the concentration on Chris’s face as he examined the dark symbol.
“Buck, check the other bodies. See if they have the same mark.”
“Right,” Buck nodded, catching on to his line of thinking, guessing Chris wanted confirmation these men were a part of a larger menace and the first step to combatting it was to find out who they were. Withdrawing from Chris, he scanned the immediate area and soon found another candidate from which they could gain their confirmation. Pushing aside the table the corpse had landed on, Buck dropped to his knees and conducted the same examination by checking the man’s hand.
“Chris, he’s got one too!” Buck hollered at Chris and suspected if they went through all the bodies, they would all be wearing the same mark. What the hell were they dealing with here?
“What have you found pard?” Vin asked Chris when he finally reached the side of the blond man, still carrying the shotgun he had liberated from Chris’s car, the long barrel facing the floor.
“All these men,” Chris made brief eye contact with the sharpshooter and paused a moment, sighting something that made him blink before he shook the thought out of his head and turned back to the dead man before him. He showed Vin the tattoo. “They’re all wearing this.”
Vin studied the tattoo and thought it was very different from the ones he’d seen worn by the Indians. While the Navajo weren’t practitioners, Vin knew plenty of other tribes that indulged in the practice of marking their skin, to express their prowess in battle, hunting and marking their spirituality.
“Some kind of cult probably. We’ve come across a couple of those since we started working for the Professor,” Vin pointed out. “Ain’t that much of a surprise, considering what these boys were dressed up for. Any idea what they wanted?”
“They were after the Heart.” Chris declared and looked up to see where JD was. The kid had an encyclopedic memory for iconography and Chris wanted him to look at the tattoo to see if he could recognise it. JD was standing over Josiah who was covering a woman with a tablecloth. Like Nathan had been doing earlier, Josiah was also checking for any survivors. Judging by the sombre expression on the big man’s face, he found none.
“JD!” Chris caught the younger man’s attention. “Over here, I need you to look at something.”
Meanwhile, Vin was staring in the direction of the showcase in its central position in the room. Taking note of the broken glass of the display case scattered across the marble floor and the general absence of the object, Vin assumed the worst. “They took it?”
“No,” Chris shook his head, recalling his instructions to Mary Travis. “We managed to get it out of here before they could get their hands on it.”
“What’s up, Chris?” JD asked when he reached them from across the room. The kid’s pallor looked decidedly grey and both Vin and Chris immediately guessed, the sight of all those dead bodies was affecting the youngest member of their group. Until now, JD’s experience with death was mostly limited to the mummified corpses they encounter when they went on their artefact hunting forays. Fresh bodies were another thing entirely and Chris could see it was taking its toll on the boy. He was almost tempted to advise JD to leave the room but knew JD wouldn’t take it well. The kid was determined to prove he was equal to any situation his comrades could face.
“You okay?” Vin asked quietly.
“Yeah,” JD nodded, flinching a bit at the body Chris was leaning over. “I’m fine.”
In fact, JD was not okay and it wasn’t the sight of the bodies which made him feel ill but rather the smell of all that blood. He was used to the dank musty smell of corpses that had long ago been desiccated until they looked like dry husks. Seeing bodies who were only a short time ago, living breathing entities and inhaling the powerful metallic stench of blood made him a little queasy. Of course, he would rather die than reveal this to either Chris or Vin, so he took a deep breath and steeled himself.
“What’s up, Chris?” He asked with a firmer voice.
Chris smiled faintly, proud at the young scholar’s efforts to man up. “Take a look at this symbol. You have seen this before?”
The possibility of unravelling a riddle immediately drove away any previous hesitation with JD dropping immediately to one knee so he could take a closer look. Forgetting he was handling a dead body now, he lifted the corpse’s hand, going so far to hold it inches from his face to study it carefully. Chris and Vin exchanged glances, smiling in amusement at the rapid shift of the boy’s demeanour, once handed a problem to solve.
“It’s a simurgh,” JD stated without looking over his shoulder after a moment.
“A what?” Buck asked as the pilot and Josiah joined them.
While Chris had never seen the symbol himself, he knew from reading what it was. “That’s Persian ain’t it? Some kind of mythological creature?”
“Yeah that’s right” JD looked up at Chris, smiling with admiration at the surprising wealth of knowledge the man seemed to possess without ever needing to step inside a university lecture hall. “It is meant to be a creature who survived the making of the world at least three times over, and is supposed to purify the land and bestow fertility.”
“So, what’s that gotta do with these boys?” Josiah glanced at his comrades in puzzlement. “That sounds to me like a rather benevolent symbol, not one to use for what these fellas were up tonight. They weren’t taking prisoners. They were going to kill everyone here.” The barely concealed anger in Josiah’s voice showed.
Chris didn’t blame him for his vitriol. What had been done here tonight was an attempt at a massacre. He hated to think what would have happened if he and the seven had not been present tonight. “Can’t say,” Chris shrugged. “But they came for the Heart.”
“Well Mr Larabee,” Ezra announced himself as he and Nathan joined them once Nathan had seen to his shoulder. He was wearing a makeshift sling Nathan had fashioned out of a belt and a table napkin, his movements slow as he tried to avoid jostling his arm and cause more pain. As it was, he was trying very hard to maintain his amiable facade despite the grimace threatening to cross his face. “You certainly know the best soirees for us to attend.”
“Well I do like a good party,” Chris deadpanned and glanced at Nathan. “How are you?”
Before Ezra answered, Nathan spoke up. “Well I couldn’t do nothing about his mouth but the rest of him is okay. Just a dislocated shoulder which I’ve popped back in. It’s going to be a little sore for a few days but won’t keep him from bitching about it to us.”
“Once again, your bedside manner has no price,” the southerner gave the medic a look.
A ripple of amusement following their relief, ran across the rest of the seven as Ezra and Nathan got into another bout of verbal sparring. Since the first day, they found themselves sharing a trench during the war, the duo had been constantly bickering. Yet despite the barbs they directed at each other, the two men shared a close friendship that had gone from strength to strength since Chris found them all four years ago. The leader of the Seven was convinced only Nathan was capable of making Ezra shut up where long bladed bowie knives (as Vin once tried) and guns failed.
“Just like the bills for my doctoring,” Nathan returned sweetly.
Chris’s eyes shifted slightly from the duo when he saw Orin and Mary returning to the scene. He noted she was now wearing her heels, reminding Chris with some chagrin, how she saved his life a short time ago. Bristling in annoyance at the debt he now owed her, Chris was certain that was smug satisfaction she was wearing on her lovely face when she cast those blue-grey eyes in his direction. He was convinced she was going to exact some terrible price for the help she’d given him.
“Who is that with the Professor?” Vin asked, having missed the introductions to Mary since he had taken the first opportunity he could, to escape the party.
“That’s Mary Travis,” Buck said sighing forlornly at the gorgeous blond, still disappointed to learn she was Orin Travis’s daughter. As much as he’d like to put the moves on such a fine woman, he had a sneaking suspicion his ‘love them and leave them’ approach to women would not impress the Professor and decided wisely to let this particular fish go.
“You should see her fight,” JD exclaimed with a smile. “She saved Chris!”
Chris gave JD a dark look, wishing the young man hadn’t brought that up. As it was he disliked the idea of any woman having to save his skin.
“She didn’t save me.” He grumbled. “I would have handled that situation.”
This, of course, was absolute bullshit and he knew it. Still, he had to admit she had been pretty impressive fighting off that crazed woman who would have introduced him to the sharp point of a dagger if Mary had not intervened. To say nothing about those gorgeous legs she’d used to do it.
“You got saved by a girl?” Vin asked and stifled a smirk when Chris shot him an infamous Larabee glare.
“You want to explain the lipstick on your face?” Chris returned, giving Vin a little tit for tat.
“Lipstick” Vin stared at him bewildered even as his hand reached for his face instinctively and realised Alex had left some of her lipstick on the corner of his mouth.
“Lipstick?” Buck, being Buck, immediately turned his neck so he could take a better look at Vin’s face, having not seen it earlier. “Vin, when did you get a chance to make out with some pretty gal?”
“I didn’t make out...” Vin snapped exasperated, not to mention a little mortified at everyone being privy to the fact he had kissed a woman in the last hour. Worse yet, he had been fighting these varmints all the time with lipstick on his face? Thankfully, he did not need to finish his sentence because he was interrupted by Orin Travis’s horrified exclamation.
“My God,” the Professor exclaimed, surveying the full measure of the destruction in lives and exhibits throughout the room. “I didn’t think they would be so bold.”
“They?” Chris’s spine stiffened with the realisation Orin knew their attackers.
Mary shot him a dark look at the accusatory tone in his voice before touching her father’s shoulder trying to assuage his horror as well as the guilt he must be feeling. “You knew the minute the Heart was unearthed, they’d be coming,” Mary said softly.
“You know who these boys are?” Josiah asked the Professor, using a less confrontational tone as was his way. The priesthood had lost a good man when Josiah had turned away from them. He had a way about him that engendered trust and projected sympathy.
“Yes,” the older scholar nodded, still staring at the bodies of people he considered friends and colleagues, unable to imagine they had come to this. “They’re called the Children of Erran and they’re after the Heart.”
That much was obvious, Chris thought silently and turned to Mary. “You still have it?”
“Yes.” She nodded, remembering his instructions to her during the worst of the fight. She looked down at the clutch she was carrying and snapped it open. A second later, she fished the artefact out and presented to all of them.
“Dad I don’t think it’s a good idea to put this on display again,” she told Orin.
“She’s right,” Chris agreed and saw her arch a brow in surprise at his support. “They were willing to kill all these people in to get to it, in the open. I don’t want to know what they’re going to do next. We need to keep this hidden until we know why they want it.”
Orin sighed. “I know why,” he met Chris’s eyes. “And considering what happened tonight, it's best you know too.”
******
Before the police descended on the museum, the whole group retired to Orin Travis’s office on the far side of the building. While they did not have a lot of time before they were subject to the ministrations of the constabulary who would require a full accounting of what transpired tonight from its eyewitnesses, it was necessary for Orin to reveal the truth known to only a select few until today. There were decisions to be made and Orin needed to make explanations quickly so they could proceed next. Chris Larabee and his team were the most capable men Orin knew and if anyone could help him navigate this situation, it was the Seven.
“This is why I asked you, boys, here tonight,” Orin explained as he sat behind his desk. Mary served him a glass of whiskey from a sifter he kept on a nearby shelf before she sat perched at the corner of the desk, unknowingly giving Chris the opportunity to admire her glorious legs. “I knew the Heart was in danger but I never imagined the Erran would come after it so openly. In the past, they’ve been subtler but I suppose they’re done being patient. It’s a good thing you boys were here tonight or else it would have gone even worse.”
It didn’t take any clairvoyance to know Orin was scared and that bothered the hell out of Chris. Orin had led them during the battle of Meuse-Argonne, leading the charge across the Argonne Forest into German artillery manned by seasoned troops. The loss of lives during that engagement had been staggering and yet this history professor had got them through it without flinching. Fear was simply not something Chris associated with the man.
“Orin,” Chris asked using a gentler tone than those present were accustomed to hearing from him. “Tell us what’s going on.”
Orin took a deep breath and began speaking, telling the tale of four young men, privileged and bored who took to Arabia for adventure. William, Orin, Hank and Donnie. How they’d met a famous archaeologist who spoke of excavating lost cities and suitably enamoured by fantasies of ancient treasures, joined the expedition. The expedition that would eventually excavate the city of Ur, hidden in the sands of Persia for almost 4000 years.
Chris tried not to react at the mention of Hank Conley’s name. Hank had also served in Europe and it was a chance meeting when they got home that allowed Chris to meet Sarah, Hank’s only daughter and by all accounts, the apple of his eye. To Hank, Chris Larabee simply was not good enough for his daughter but for Sarah’s sake, they managed to forge something of a relationship. After her death, Hank had laid the blame of the fire on Chris’s shoulders for not being there when his wife and son needed him most as if Chris didn’t already harbour enough guilt on the matter.
Orin continued his narration, explaining how they’d taken their share of artefacts but kept secret the chamber they discovered one night when they went exploring alone in a remote part of the site, away from the main dig. The small temple it led into was presided over by one mummified priest in his tomb and once they unsealed it, discovered the four cryptices they would come to learn later was the Four Pillars.
Each taking one of the Pillars for their own, they considered it nothing more than some ancient relic of a long-forgotten religion. Even when they did reveal the presence of the temple to the rest of the archaeological expedition, they kept secret their booty, believing the Pillars were just rewards for their discovery. When the expedition team conducted their own survey, it was revealed that the site was a Temple of Erran one of the minor Mesopotamian deities.
“Eventually we had to come home and take up our responsibilities. I came back to New Mexico and took up a teaching position at the university. William went to medical school, Donnie inherited the family business in Philadelphia and Hank went to Arizona. We kept in touch through letters and spent summers together. Two years after we got home, a few months after the birth of his daughter, someone broke into Donnie’s home and slit his throat.”
“Jesus,” Vin whispered.
Orin didn’t react to the sharpshooter’s exclamation but judging by the grim faces across the room, he saw the rest of the seven shared the young man’s horror. “Whoever did it, tried to make it look like a robbery but only one thing was stolen.”
No one had to guess what that was.
“His Pillar,” Chris stated without needing Orin to say it.
“Yes.” Orin grimly. “It was stolen and for the first time, we paid attention to what we’d taken from that temple. We talk to Sir John Evans, our expedition leader who told us about the history of the Four Pillars and how it was meant to be used to unlock the Heart. The Heart contains directions to locating the Tablets of Destiny. According to the legends, whoever reads from this tablet, can remake the world in their own image. None of us believed this nonsense of course but that didn’t change the fact Donnie was dead because someone did.
After Donnie’s death, we knew we had to be vigilant. Each of us hid the Pillar we possessed someplace safe and went about our lives as if we suspected nothing about the nature of them except now, we never spoke about the Pillars openly. The plan seemed to work and for years nothing happened. Then Hank died.”
Buck shot Chris a look, aware of how even the remotest possibility of Hank Conley meeting his end under suspicious circumstances might affect his oldest friend despite his relationship with his father. “He fell? Didn’t he?”
“We assumed he did.”
Chris looked away from the others, thinking about the last time he saw Hank Conley. By then, their relationship had deteriorated to the point where they were no longer on speaking terms. Without Sarah, Hank turned mean and even though Chris should have tried to keep in touch for her sake, he couldn’t bear to be around the man whose venom kept Chris’s wounds raw and open. To get on with the business of living, he needed to be able to live with their deaths and being around Hank would assure that never happened.
“When we agreed to hide the Pillars,” Orin resumed speaking. “We decided the last one of us left alive should know where all the artefacts could be found. We gave the location to our lawyers, to be delivered when all the others were dead. When Hank died of a fall with no signs of foul play, we mourned him but thought nothing more about it. Later, when I found out where he hid his Pillar and went to look for it, it was gone.”
“You’re telling me they got Hank to talk?” Chris couldn’t believe that. Whatever his feelings for the man, Hank was as stubborn as a mule. He wouldn’t talk without torture and since there were no signs of it according to Orin, Chris was adamant Hank took his secrets to the grave.
“I’m not sure,” Orin explained. “Towards the end, he wasn’t making much sense. You weren’t there Chris; his mind was becoming quite unstable. He might have told them without even realising. In any case, it was gone. We expected them to come after us but nothing happened.”
“There was no reason to,” Mary spoke up. “Without the Heart, the Pillars were useless but once it was found, we knew the Erran would be coming.”
“William is dead?” Josiah asked, suspecting it had to be the case if the Professor was taking them into his confidence.
It was Mary who answered and the seven saw the grief in Orin’s eyes at the passing of his friend, a sentiment they all could share considering the closeness of their bond to each other.
“He was killed two weeks ago, supposedly during a burglary.”
“So, the attack this evening may not simply have been to take the Heart but extract the location of the remaining Pillars from you.” Ezra deduced. “I assume you have the remaining two.”
“No,” Orin shook his head. “William changed his instructions to his lawyer. Instead of them coming to me, its location was going to his daughter. You see William spent years after Donnie’s death studying the mythology of the tablet and what it would mean if it was found and used. William really believed it could unmake the world. He was determined no matter what, his cryptex would go to someone who could hide it away and keep it from being used as a set. I guess he thought keeping it away from me would be safer.”
“Makes sense,” Nathan remarked. “They’ve already got two of the pieces. If you have the last two, they just need to get to you to gain the whole set.”
Vin was silent because he was thinking hard about what they had just told and the pieces were reaching a conclusion he did not like. As soon as the Professor had mentioned a daughter, Vin’s mind was whirling. He thought of that beautiful girl on the roof, who with a single kiss, had made him feel like he could fly. The girl, who had business with the Professor, who was still grieving for someone whose loss was fresh in her lovely sad eyes.
“She’s here,” Vin stated, jumping to his feet, heading for the door. “William’s daughter is here!”
And he had her left out there alone.
CHAPTER SIX:
RESCUE
Bolting out of Orin Travis’s office, Vin ran down the empty hallway towards the parking lot where he left Alex in Chris’s Hudson.
Behind him, Vin heard footsteps running after him and didn’t need to look over his shoulder to see it was Chris Larabee. As it was when the young lieutenant played surrogate father to him during the war on the Western Front, the leader of the seven was not about to shirk his responsibility now Vin was an adult. Their connection, forged in blood and combat, had solidified into a friendship that was more than just family or brotherhood. It was almost symbiotic.
Vin knew destiny was playing them on a cosmic turntable where his place in the scheme of things would always be at Chris’s side.
Just like the connection, he felt to Alex. From the moment he laid eyes on her, he felt it. Seeing her shifted the cools sands of his reserve, where most of his feelings remained hidden. Emerging from it was a heart beaten into submission long ago, suddenly finding a reason to reach for the light. When she kissed him, that tiny neglected corner of himself, containing dreams not even his friends knew about, came alive. When Vin left her, he felt as if for the first time, everything in his universe was finally whole.
“Vin!” Chris called after the young man, once he told the others to remain behind with the Professor, now they understood the danger the man was in. Besides, the police would soon descend on them and they were going to have to give statements about their part in tonight’s incident. The sharpshooter was running down the hallway, headed towards the first set of stairs to take him to ground level. Vin didn’t look back and Chris knew he was in the grip of a single-minded pursuit that would tolerate no interference until he reached his destination.
Chris had no idea what transpired between Vin and William Styles’s daughter tonight, but one thing was clear, she had definitely gotten under Vin’s skin.
In some ways, Chris was almost glad to see it. It was not lost on him the younger man’s hesitation around the opposite sex. Oh, he could talk to them alright, he wasn’t a complete social misfit but Chris did notice his reluctance to approach them on a romantic level. Even though Vin had turned many a lady’s eye during their adventures, he never seemed to take advantage of it the way Buck did. If anything, Vin always seemed shy around them as if he didn’t think himself worthy of their notice. Which was ridiculous since Vin Tanner was one of the most capable people he knew.
Then again, considering the course Vin’s life had taken, perhaps it was not such a mystery after all.
During the war, Vin’s introduction to the subject of the opposite sex involved witnessing his older comrades partaking in the company of the ladies occupying the numerous bordellos, along the Front. From what Vin had told him, after escaping the authorities when they returned home, Vin’s refuge with the Navajo existed on something of a knife’s edge. Kojay, the old Indian tracker who took him in and raised Vin alongside his own son, Chanu, fought to keep him on the reservation when the rest of the Navajo were ambivalent about allowing a white child in their company. On that basis, Chris doubted they would have tolerated Vin consorting with their daughters on any level.
By the time Vin joined the Texas Rangers he had become so accustomed to being alone, he simply did not have the inclination to sow his wild oats as any young man his age was apt to do. Then again, Vin was such an idealist despite his unflappable manner implying cynicism, Chris believed there was every chance he was a romantic too. It would not surprise Chris in the slightest if Vin was simply biding his time waiting for the right girl to come along.
And perhaps tonight, she had.
When they reached the manicured lawns surrounding the museum, the blare of sirens could be heard over the murmur of survivors outside the building. The front of the museum resembled the floor of a triage unit, with injured people being attended to by loved ones as they waited for the ambulances to arrive and take them to proper medical help. They were seated on the steps and lying across the grass, their fine, formal wear stained with blood as their faces showed the shock and confusion of tonight’s horror.
Chris ignored the scene for the moment. There would be plenty of time to take it all in when the authorities arrived when he and Vin surrendered themselves to the police for questioning. As it was, the red strobe of police cars stabbed his eyes through the night and Chris knew they had only a few minutes before the law arrived. Turning back to Vin, he found the younger man at his Hudson and was kneeling on the ground next to it.
Lying against the tar was a lady’s purse and an open box of sugar babies, the candy spread across the road like marbles.
Vin was staring at them hard and for once Chris couldn’t read the inscrutable expression on his face. Picking up the purse, Vin looked almost afraid to touch it and when he looked up at Chris’s arrival, his blue eyes were dark.
“She’s gone,” he said bitterly. “They took her.”
“We’ll get her back Vin,” Chris placed a hand on his shoulder. “Count on it.”
The sharpshooter did not speak. Instead, he reached for his pocket and pulled out the handkerchief she had used to dry her eyes. Pressing it to his lips, he took in the slight scent of her perfume still clinging to the fabric. That maddening scent had been all around him when he kissed her.
“Yeah,” Vin said quietly. “We still got a date.”
******
Lying against the floor of the car, Alexandra Styles could hear the roar of the engines as it sped away from the museum and tried not to let the fear overtake her. The two men in the back seat of the vehicle had slipped a gag in her mouth shortly after they wrestled her into it. Not long after, her hands were bound behind her back. So far, they made no demands of her, only barking at each other in their odd oriental accents, wearing clothes more appropriate for a Valentino film. Because she lay beneath the seats, she couldn’t get a far enough glimpse through the window to see where they were going and this only heightened her fear even more.
No one knew they had taken her. No one except maybe the young man whose jacket she was still wearing. She thought of him with his soulful blue eyes and felt a pang of disappointment at not being there in the car when he returned. She lowered her face to her shoulder and brushed her skin against the fabric of his jacket. She could almost smell a faint trace of his cologne and for some reason, it comforted her. Perhaps, he might wonder where she had gone. Would he try to find her, if he did? Would he care enough to try?
A secret part of her hoped he would.
The time seemed to stretch as she lay on the floor of the car until she knew they were a good distance away from the museum, which only increased her anxiety because that meant she could be anywhere now. What on Earth did they want with her anyway? She was no one, just a fourth-year medical student, one most people considered coloured because her mother had been Indian. Sure, she had money because daddy left her with a sizeable inheritance, probably intended to see her through college and beyond. Did they want money? If it meant staying alive so she could meet Vin for that drink, she’d happily pay it.
A shift in gear told Alex the car was going to slow and no sooner than she heard the soft click of the gear stick locking into place, the rumble of the engines dropped an octave as the vehicle came to a stop. Through what little she could see through the window, the night sky and hear the chirping of insect life beyond the car offered no revelations about their destination. There was no other sound and where she was appeared to be devoid of any other voices. The possibility she was being taken somewhere remote to be killed, or worse, drove her to near panic.
When the car doors opened and the men inside the car climbed out. Alex debated whether she ought to fight to remain in the vehicle. It felt much more merciful than what might happen to her once she was outside, at the place they intended her to be. She had no chance to consider the matter further because the door opened near her and Alex was dragged roughly out of the vehicle by both men who set upright her on her feet.
Alex prepared to give them a fight when suddenly, the realisation of where she was made her freeze in her tracks.
She was home.
********
Inside the Hudson, Chris, Vin and Buck were speeding towards the home of William Styles, who had moved into the area some years ago after his daughter had gone to medical school. While they had fully intended to wait around to be questioned by the authorities, the abduction of the girl had Vin chomping at the bit and Chris knew if they didn’t act immediately, the younger man was going to do something stupid. Besides, it made sense wasting no time going after her. If Chris’s understanding of the situation was correct, they had abducted her for only one reason and that was to retrieve the Pillar she had in her possession.
The Professor invited Alex to the party tonight because he wanted to tell the girl about the possible danger she was in, now William’s Pillar had been passed down to her. However, the possible threat had become a terrifying reality and Orin feared now she was in their hands, they would not hesitate to employ the most brutal methods to get what they wanted. Voicing that fear had been enough to send Vin into a state of panic and the rest of the seven were rather surprised by how a chance meeting with Alex Styles had affected Vin so deeply.
Meanwhile, Chris had concluded that neither Orin or his rather irritating daughter were safe either. If the Erran were willing to act so openly tonight, there was no telling what lengths they would go, to get the Heart and the Pillar still in Orin’s hands. Thus, Chris left Josiah, Nathan, Ezra and JD to keep watch on Orin and Mary, while they headed south to Santa Fe where William had set up a medical practice in recent years.
“Chris, what are we going to do once we get the girl and the Pillar?” Buck Wilmington who could never stand silence asked as he sat in the back seat of the car, tired of watching the night rush by his window or the foreboding mood of tension gripping them all. The ride so far had been steeped in grim silence with Vin saying nothing as he rode shotgun next to Chris, who was doing the driving.
Buck didn’t know who this girl was but she had certainly done a number on the second youngest member of the seven if the intensity of Vin’s worry was any indication. Buck only hoped they got to her before any serious harm fell upon the lady. The way Vin was looking right now, Buck didn’t think he could stand it.
In some ways, Vin Tanner was very much like how Chris used to be before the fire took Sarah and Adam. It was probably why Chris had taken to the kid during the war. They were so much alike. Buck didn’t want to see the effect on Vin if this girl was taken away from him before they had time to mean something to each other. No one wanted to see history repeating itself on Vin, the way it had with Chris.
“I’m not sure,” Chris answered Buck, grateful the pilot had chosen to break the silence. Even though they were only fifteen minutes away from their destination, he could see the slight ticking of Vin’s jaw, indicating the young man was bristling with impatience. Sitting on his hands was driving Vin crazy and Chris knew it wouldn’t take much to set his powder keg emotions alight. “These sons of bitches are patient and brutal. They’ve been waiting literally for decades for the Heart to appear, they’re not going to stop until they get all the pieces together and find the Tablet.”
“So, what do we do?” Buck asked. “Find it ourselves?”
Chris had considered the idea. More than considered actually. Getting their hands on it would certainly shift the Errans’ focus off the Professor and the two women, but that would mean drawing the cult’s obsession and Chris wasn’t certain that was a solution. “We could do that. I mean the whole purpose of this thing is to get the Tablet. If we got our hands on it first, stashed it someplace they could not...”
“You smash it so it can’t be used,” Vin stated suddenly.
Chris threw a glance at Vin while Buck merely stared at him in shock. They had been hunting antiquities for so long they had developed a certain respect for the artefacts and its history, beyond the monetary value. Hearing Vin talk about obliterating one was jarring.
“Vin...” Chris started to speak, aware of the heated emotions driving the younger man when Vin cut him off.
“I ain’t saying this because of Alex,” Vin explained himself, his eyes still fixed on the road ahead. “I’m saying it, because this is the only way to keep the Erran from coming after her and the Professor. It ain’t just an artefact to them Chris, it’s their way of unmaking the world. They believe it and we’ve seen how crazy people get when it comes to their religion.”
Chris couldn’t argue that point. They had crossed the world these last four years and what people were willing to do for belief was a terrifying thing to behold. Hell, there were people in this country who believed handling snakes brought them closer to God. Yeah, Chris knew what Vin was trying to say. As long as the Tablet existed, the Erran would never stop hunting for it.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Chris remarked tossing Buck a glance. “Right now, let’s just get to the girl.”
According to Orin, William Styles had moved to Santa Fe four years ago after his daughter Alex had left their native New York for medical school. Perhaps wishing to be closer to his oldest friend in his later years, the eminent doctor had taken up a position at the local hospital and bought himself a modest estate in the small community of Seton Village. As Chris noted the remote surroundings, the former soldier had to wonder if Styles had chosen the location to hide away from the Erran.
Approaching the estate, they saw a multi-storied house of Spanish-Mexican architecture, surrounded by walls of stone fencing. However, through the gap of the entry, they saw the gates were splayed open and despite the late hour, there was light pouring out of the windows. Running the engine low as they neared the driveway, they saw two cars parked one after the other near the path leading to the front door. Since Styles lived alone and Alex if she lived here, was out, there was no reason for there to be callers at this time of the night.
Bringing the car to a halt as near as they could to the gate, without being seen by the estate’s intruders, Chris, Vin and Buck climbed out of the car and armed themselves sufficiently, anticipating trouble. With no other homes in the area and very little traffic, the sound of the night could be heard clearly. Beyond the chirping of unseen insects in the desert shrubbery, the occasional nocturnal critter emerging for the nightly foraging, there was little sound. At least until they got closer.
The minute they made their way up the long cobblestone driveway, the sounds of breakage shattered the night. Voices were chattering excitedly moving throughout the house, their footsteps overlapping the sound of furniture falling over, or screeching across the floor and more objects breaking. Chris wished JD was here because the words being spoken by the intruders were not of a language he understood. The kid would have figured it out in a minute.
“They’re looking for the Pillar,” Buck remarked quietly as he held the Remington in his grip, scanning the line of yucca trees and the garden flanking the right side of the driveway, with its shrubbery of Mugho Pine, Butterfly Bush and other native flora.
“Yeah,” Chris nodded in agreement, wanting to reach a window so he could see how many of these bastards they were dealing with. Clearly, they hadn’t found the artefact yet, judging by the annoyance he could hear in their voices. Frustration was capable of crossing any language barrier.
Suddenly a voice cried out through the night in words they understood immediately.
“Let go of me!”
Chris had only to glance at Vin to know immediately, it was Alex.
*****
His name was Adashir Shah and from the day he was born, he was raised to rule.
The Empire he would carve for himself had long ago faded into the desert sands of time but as his father and mother had raised him to believe, death was not an ending and empires could rise again. Claiming lineage to the Sassanid kings of the past, he had taken up the mantle left to him by his father and the generations before him, to unleash the god Erran and let him remake a better world, one free of white colonialism and decadence.
Standing in front of the woman before him, he took note that she was exquisitely beautiful and brushed his fingertips on her cheek as two of his men held her tight, one with an arm locked around her throat, while the other holding a blade to her ribs. When Shah touched her, she squirmed hard, trying to escape his fingers. He found her resistance made him want her more, especially when he saw the tuxedo coat around her shoulders. Knowing she belonged to someone else, made her forbidden fruit that was so much tastier.
“No one is coming to save you,” he said as he stared into her frightened eyes. “Give me what I want and I may make the next few years pleasant. Give me any trouble and you’ll die here tonight.”
“I don’t know what you want!” Alex burst out in fear, not at all liking her two choices and at present, what he considered pleasant, Alex suspected may be a living hell.
“The Pillar!” He snapped, grabbing her hair and pulling her face to him. “Where is the Pillar? Your father has been most efficient in hiding it. Where is it?”
“The Pillar?” She stared at him in shock. That ghost story her father always told her? While she knew he had an interest in Arabian folklore and collected artifacts, the Pillar was not one of them. “He doesn’t have it.”
A sharp blow against the cheek made Alex’s head swim, and she felt the skin of face flare in pain. “Of course he has it! He and his friends raped my land to get it! Now tell me where it is, or I’ll have these men do the same!”
“I swear,” Alex started to sob as she saw the leer on the faces of the men keeping her subdued. “I don’t know where it is! He never told me!”
He raised his hand to strike her again when suddenly a gunshot rang out and the Erran standing next to Alex with his blade, jerked back violently when the back of his skull exploded outward. Blood and brain mattered splattered across the bust of Louis Pasteur sitting on the edge of her father’s desk. Uttering a terrified cry of horror as Shah spun around, Alex looked over his shoulder and felt the voice die in her throat as she saw Vin Tanner taking aim at the doorway, preparing to fire again. Across the house, more gunfire erupted.
Emboldened by the sight of him, Alex sank her teeth into the arm locked around her neck and bit down hard enough to ensure she tasted blood. Her captive swore loudly and shoved her forward and it was with some satisfaction Alex saw an imprint of her teeth that would make any dentist proud.
“Alex get down!”
Dropping to her knees, she saw Shah starting to turn around, attempting to grab her when another bullet fired, this one so close Alex thought she felt it over her head, struck the Erran behind her. She saw the spread of blood across his chest before he collapsed on the floor face first. His death compelled the man the others called the Shah to take cover and before he could use her for a hostage, Alex scrambled away on her hands and knees. She took refuge behind the oak desk with every intention of staying put until the shooting was done.
Shah could see the new arrival at the doorway preparing to take aim and judging by the gunfire he could hear across the house, guessed the rest of his men were similarly engaged. He himself was not armed. What need of it was there when he had his men around him. Yet as he saw the both of them lying dead across the floor, realised a hasty retreat was necessary. Glaring at the girl who had crawled out of reach, Shah turned his attention to the window closest to him.
Without hesitation, he ran for the window with gunfire chasing his every step and threw himself against the glass. A sound of breaking wood and shattered fragments followed him out of the room, into the cool night air beyond. He landed hard on the grass outside, his body feeling the cuts of glass against his skin as he rolled across the ground, trailing glass and broken pieces of wood. Shah got to his feet, not waiting to see if the shooter would come after him, choosing instead to dust himself off before heading towards the cars in the driveway.
Shah regretted leaving his men to their fates but the cause was more important and his survival was its survival.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
INTRUDERS
It wasn’t hard to determine the purpose of the intruders in the home of the late Doctor Styles.
When Chris, Buck and Vin approached the house through the shroud of darkness outside, they could hear the conversation between the enemy, spoken in a tongue none of the three men understood. Following those voices were the familiar sounds of ransacking as drawers squeaked open, books were shuffled across shelves like cards before being discarded onto the floor. Keepsakes and ornaments were smashed against the hardwood floor, in concert with the tearing of upholstery. There was no mystery what they were seeking just as it was no surprise, to Chris and the others, they were not going to find it.
From Orin’s description of William Styles, the man understood better than all his companions what they stumbled into, all those years ago in Persia. In understanding the lore, William also realised just how determined the Erran would be to reclaim what they perceived to be theirs by right. After the deaths of Donald Avery and Hank Conley, it made sense he would break with what was agreed upon between the remaining friends and make his own decisions on how his cryptex or Pillar ought to be hidden. It would never be in his house.
Unfortunately for her, William Styles’s daughter would pay the price.
When they approached the front door of the house, they found the double doors to be splayed wide open as if the home was gaping in shock at the intrusion. They could see the shadow of bodies moving across the windows. Some of the men were upstairs, while the rest were below. Fortunately, Chris, Buck and Vin were perfectly aware of how to infiltrate a place in silence. Traversing forbidden places in stealth the last four years had made their ability to approach covertly quite expert.
Reaching the doorway, Chris gestured at Buck to head up the stairs, while he and Vin took care of the men in the lower floor of the house. Judging by the racket they were making, their concentration seemed to be focussed on the ground level at this time. Buck nodded, clutching the Remington and allowing Chris and Vin to cover him as he dashed across the front vestibule and started up the stairs. They watched him ascend the staircase ensuring no one followed him before they stepped in.
Vin was barely able to contain himself, wanting to rush in and save the girl who was being interrogated for what she did or did not know. Each time, they heard the hard slap of flesh, Chris saw Vin’s jaw tense in rage, aware such a sound could only come from the girl being brutalised. However, while some men allowed such imperatives to cloud their judgement, Chris Larabee knew better. When Vin cared about someone, such actions did nothing but turn his rage into a white-hot razor capable of making surgical attacks.
“You go for the girl,” Chris whispered quietly, “I’ll clear the rest of the house.”
Vin nodded, almost grateful to be let off the leash. His blue eyes held its darkened shade as he stepped through the door and headed towards the sound of the interrogation. Once he was gone, Chris followed suit, crossing the short space across the front hall to the doorway leading into the living room. Standing briefly at the doorway, he peered into the room and saw two men. One was cutting a sofa to ribbons with a blade, even though it was highly unlikely the pillar would be hidden there but he supposed, the Erran were leaving nothing to chance. As cotton and fabric drifted about his feet, the cultist threw aside the cushion he had just shredded and moved to a sideboard.
The other man was going through the books on the shelf, shaking the pages to see if anything valuable escaped them. When he was met with failure, he dropped the leather-bound books on the rug, moving to the next book. Chris remained where he was for a few seconds, watching them go through the room, violating it with their carelessness, before the one destroying the upholstery took an alternate exit to the next room, out of sight.
Chris waited for all but ten seconds before the Erran at the shelf turned back to the books, continuing his search. Once his back was turned, Chris was on the move. The former soldier crossed the space between himself and his quarry quickly, his silent approach aided by the expensive rug on the floor. Instead of a gun, Chris instead produced a switchblade pocket knife and extended the blade with a silent snikt.
Closing in the distance, the Erran never knew until it was too late, he was a zebra on the savannah, being stalked by a lion, finally ready to pounce. Chris’s hand cupped the man’s mouth while the blade sliced open the flesh beneath it. He uttered a silent scream into Chris’s palm, or rather a gurgle since his vocal chords were severed in that first cut. The man struggled for a few seconds in Chris’s grip as the blood ran down his chest before he was released to slump quietly to the ground.
Once he was dead, his blood spreading out like a crimson cloak beneath him, Chris wiped the blade against the man’s robes before straightening up to go deal with his companion. Replacing the blade in his coat pocket after he folded it again, Chris took silent steps to the next room where the other Erran was presently pulling open the draws in the dining table sideboard, having already created a mess in napkins and placemats on the floor.
Suddenly gunfire broke out above and it all went to hell.
The man straightened and turned sharply in his direction, but Chris was ready for him. No sooner than he saw Chris, the leader of the seven was pulling the trigger on his gun. The Colt Peacemaker fired once, and the bullet caught the Erran in the chest, dropping him immediately. He tumbled against the sideboard, his dying hand gripping the runner resting against it and pulling the remaining objects with him to the floor in a loud clatter.
In the other room, Chris heard Vin shouting at the girl and ordering her to get down. Knowing how proficient Vin could be with a gun, Chris retreated into the hallway and started up the stairs, just in time to see a dark shape tumbling down the steps towards him. Flattening his back against the wall, the body came down the staircase like a rolling dervish before hitting the floor with a wet sickly squelch that made his jaw clench.
The robed figure landed with his back against the floor, arms and legs splayed out like a grisly five-pointed star. If the fall hadn’t killed this particular Erran, then the spread of dark red against the front of his chest, certainly did. Chris continued up the staircase, hearing another gunshot coming from the study where Vin was. He was almost tempted to go after the sharpshooter when the scuffling noises through the ceiling kept him ascending the stairs.
Reaching the top of the steps, Chris arrived just in time to see Buck throwing one of the Erran against the wall, smashing the picture frame hanging there. Glass broke loudly as the man attempted to bring a blade down on Buck, but the pilot was having none of it. Without much trouble, Buck maintained his grip and flung the man against the opposite wall, this time against a credenza. No sooner than he landed, Buck dropped down and retrieved the gun that must have fallen from his hand when the Erran attacked.
With reflexes that made him one of the best pilots in the war, Buck took aim just as the man recovered. He took one step towards Buck before the big man pulled the trigger. The explosion of sound in the narrow hallway masked the sickly burst of rupturing flesh and bone that painted a mural of gore across the pale blue wallpaper. The Erran’s head was still tilted backwards from the force of the bullet, his eyes staring lifelessly into the ceiling before he fell against the wall. His body created a slick trail across the paint as he sank to the floor.
“What took you?” Buck offered him a grin when suddenly another Erran jumped out of the darkness, running at them with manic eyes, his blade held high ready to strike, screeching like a wraith in the night.
Without missing a beat, both Buck and Chris raised their guns and fired at the same time. Both bullets met their targets and the force of it swept the Erran off his feet even as they heard glass breaking below them. The man felt against the floor with a heavy thud, his blade planted into the wood as it landed. He did not move again, and Chris approached him cautiously, hands still gripping his pearl handled peacemaker, ready to fire if the son of a bitch tried to surprise him. Both bullets had struck him in the chest and either one could have been the fatal shot.
Checking the man’s pulse, the warmth was already starting to bleed out of his body as Chris held his fingers against the man’s throat. He raised his eyes to Buck and shook his head. “He’s done.”
“Good,” Buck winced, and it was only then did Chris notice the stain of blood on his shirt.
“You hurt?” Chris asked, his brow furrowing with concern.
“It ain’t bad,” Buck assured him, frowning at the growing stain just beneath his clavicle. “He managed to nick me when we were tussling.”
It was a little more than a nick Chris suspected but Buck wasn’t stupid enough to downplay a serious injury, so Chris took him on his word. Besides, they would head back to join Nathan and the others.
“Where’s Vin?” Buck asked and then shrugged. “Never mind, I can guess.”
******
Once Vin saw the son of a bitch who had struck Alex go through the window, Vin had almost been tempted to go after the man. However, his first thought was not the escaping man but the girl he had been terrorizing until Vin’s arrival. Fighting the urge to rush into the room, Vin had presence enough to call after Chris, especially when the gunfire had ceased, wanting to make sure the house was secure before he went to coax Alex out of her hiding place.
“Chris?” He stepped back into the hallway, taking note of the dead body at the foot of the staircase with little more than a shrug. After what the leader of the bunch was threatening Alex with, not to mention hitting her, Vin had no compassion for any of these bastards.
“We’re good Vin,” Chris returned as he and Buck started to descend the staircase.
No sooner Vin had glimpsed both men and made sure they were in one piece, Vin headed back into the study, seeking out Alex. He had seen her drop to her knees during the firefight and searched the room for her, upon stepping inside.
“Alex?” He called out to her. “It’s Vin. You’re safe.”
“Vin?” She answered almost immediately.
Vin saw something shift behind the expensive oak desk and headed towards it just as he saw Alex crawling out of her hiding place. She raised her head to meet his eyes and Vin’s jaw tensed when he saw the dark bruise forming under her eye. However, his anger was fleeting because he was so relieved to see she was alright. They had met only a short time ago, but Vin couldn’t forget how she made him feel. How she still made him feel.
Offering her his hand, Alex took it as she stood up and Vin noted she was still wearing his jacket. She looked frightened but like him, the emotion was being swept away at her relief to see him. Not just relief but also wonder at his being here. Her eyes seemed to sparkle as she saw Vin and though that terrible bruise marred her lovely features, it had no power against the smile she was giving him so radiantly. Once again Vin felt his heart melt in his chest and wondered at this power she had over him.
“You came after me,” Alex replied, unable to believe he was actually here.
When she was terrified during the drive from the museum where she imagined some terrible fate, Alex had hoped the way a desperate person clung to fanciful ideas of deliverance, he might come for her. Like a knight in shining armour. Logically, she had known better. How could she expect him to risk his life in search of her, when they'd spent barely an hour together? Because they had shared a kiss. Not just any kiss but THE kiss, the one you remembered forever, even though Alex wasn't some starry-eyed school girl who believed in the nonsense of love at first sight.
“We had a date,” Vin stared into her warm brown eyes and knew this thing that gripped him so completely, had her too. “Couldn’t let you...”
Before he could finish speaking, she was pressing her lips to his, her hand against his cheek as she kissed him, not just for gratitude but because in that one instant, love at first sight was possible and it had come for her.
Vin felt his head swim and his heart pound as he became lost in her touch. Her scent swirled around him while her taste was familiar yet exciting. Vin drew her body against his and felt a shudder of pleasure run through him at how right it felt her being there. It wasn’t as if there weren’t women before this, there were. It just never felt as perfect as this. When she kissed him earlier, it felt like suddenly everything had finally shifted into place in his universe. He had his best friends at his side and a woman he just knew was meant for him.
Whatever happened after today, Vin knew they would always belong to each other.
******
“Goddamnit woman,” Buck grumbled as he sat in the study, his neck craned to one side as he felt the sting of iodine biting into his skin.
Shortly after introductions were made, once Chris and Buck’s arrival had managed to pry the couple’s lips apart, Alex who had recovered quickly from her abduction took note of Buck’s injury and insisted on looking at it. She was a fourth-year medical student and more than capable of treating the injury, especially after they had come to her rescue. With Buck’s blood-stained dress shirt pulled halfway down his back, Alex was using the supplies in her father’s doctor’s bag to attend him.
“Don’t be such a big baby,” she scolded, giving Vin a little smile. “I have to clean the wound, or it will get infected. Besides, I think you need stitches.”
“Stitches?” Buck grumbled. “Just put a Band-Aid on it.”
Alex gave the man a look that showed him under no circumstances was that happening. “That wound is too deep for a Band-Aid. Just be grateful it didn’t reach any muscle. Don’t worry, I’ve done this before. It's not like I would sew up anything that’s supposed to remain open.”
“You really want to date this woman, Vin?” Buck asked, giving her a look of mock hatred.
“Yeah,” Vin winked at Alex. “She keeps sugar babies in her purse. It’s just what I look for in a woman.”
Alex flashed him a radiant smile before going back to work on Buck’s shoulder.
Chris stepped returned to the room, after searching one of the cars left behind by the Erran when Alex’s interrogator had fled the scene. Frowning because he hadn’t found anything to give them any clues leading back to the cult, Chris was at least grateful Buck was being tended to, even if he was complaining like a child. Then again, as Nathan could attest, none of the seven were very cooperative whenever they had to surrender themselves to the ministrations of a healer.
“He going to live?” Chris asked the young woman as she stood over Buck, preparing a syringe whose business end Buck was going to become very familiar with, soon.
“Yes, but not that you’d know listening to him complain,” she said with a smile and Chris had to admit, the girl was a looker. He could understand why Vin was so enamoured and the way she looked at the sharpshooter, implied Alex Styles felt the same about him. “It’s a deep cut but nothing vital was damaged. It needs sewing up.”
“Nice,” Buck glared at her, but despite this Chris could see the faint smile on the pilot’s lips that implied he liked the girl and more than that, he approved. Buck knew women better than anyone and he could usually save his friends from making a big mistake if their eye caught one that would give them trouble.
“Did you find anything Chris?” Vin asked, turning away from Alex and Buck for the moment, his easy-going manner returned now he was no longer worried about the lovely Miss Styles.
“Nah,” Chris shook his head. “One of the cars were gone but we expected that. The other was empty. Probably stolen for all we know.”
“They won’t stop coming after her until they get the Pillar,” Vin said quietly, glancing over his shoulder and giving Alex a look of concern.
“Yeah,” Chris nodded in agreement at that grim reality. So long as the Pillar was in her possession, the young woman was in danger.
“Hey!” Buck swore when Alex injected him with a local, to dull the area around his wound in preparation for sewing his stitches.
“Oh my God!” Alex rolled her eyes, swatting him on the back of the head. “Grow up, you child!”
“I don’t like you,” Buck grumbled.
“I’ll try to live with the disappointment,” Alex deadpanned but like Buck, she was smiling at the pilot too. It was clear despite their bickering, the two were warming to each other. Alex tossed Vin an affectionate smile which the sharpshooter returned with a playful wink.
“If you two are done behaving like a bunch of kids,” Chris interrupted good-naturedly, deciding he liked Alex’s manner too. Like Nathan, she wasn’t going to put up with their antics when there was healing to be done. He suspected she and Nathan were going to get along famously.
“I resent that,” Buck replied. “She’s the one who’s sticking me with things.”
“Miss Styles,” Chris ignored Buck and continued. “Those men tonight want the Pillar. They think you have it and they’ll be back.”
Alex shuddered, trying to hide her fear as she tried to thread a needle and failed. “I don’t know where it is. To me this whole thing was a ghost story. Something my father played with as a hobby.”
“Alex darlin,” Vin said gently. “Those people tonight came after Orin Travis to kill him and take his cryptex. Your pa had one too. So did Donald Avery and Hank Conley. They each had one. I can’t imagine your pa not giving you an idea of where it might be. He had to know these Erran might come after you when he passed.”
Alex exhaled loudly. She hated thinking her father might have kept things from her, but it was painfully obvious now he had. The ghost story she thought he told her was in fact, something terrifyingly real and a burden her father carried with him into death. Worse yet, now that Vin and his friends had told her what Orin intended for her to know tonight, there was every possibility they murdered her father too. Knowing that infuriated Alex and made her determined to deny them their prize.
“All he left me other than my inheritance was a letter telling me that he loved me, and he was proud of me. That even though I was going on alone, we would have memories of our lives together, the adventures we shared.”
“Adventures?” Chris stared at her, feeling something about that statement, tickling the back of his mind.
“Oh yes,” Alex replied, feeling a wave of sadness knowing they would never go on those trips again and hid how much it hurt, though she could tell by the way Vin was looking at her, he saw her pain. Comforted by that, Alex continued to explain.
“When I was a little girl, we used to go trekking all over the country together. Every time I was on vacation from school, we’d go to a different place before we’d wind up back in Albuquerque to spend the rest of the summer with Orin and his family. That’s how he discovered Seton Village. We were travelling, on our way to visit Orin, when we stopped here to look at an ancient Pueblo mound temple he wanted to see. He liked the area so much, he decided to move here after I left for college.”
Chris exchanged a glance at Vin and Buck.
“You don’t think?” Buck asked wondering if it could be that simple?
“What?” Alex asked, staring at the three men who had obviously figured something out and was somewhat annoyed there weren’t letting her in on it
“Miss Styles,” Chris Larabee said with a smile. “Just where is this mound dwelling?”
CHAPTER EIGHT:
DAUGHTERS
There was nothing that could not be fixed by a good glass of cognac.
This much Ezra Standish was willing to concede as he sat comfortably in one of the leather wing chairs at the home of Orin Travis, at the same time his comrades were rescuing William Styles’s daughter. Convinced the Professor and his daughter were in danger, a sentiment Ezra readily shared, Chris Larabee had ordered the rest of the seven to remain at Orin’s side for the rest of the evening. Despite the Errans’ failure tonight at the museum, he did not underestimate the veracity of the cultists to retrieve the missing pieces needed to acquire the Tablet of Destiny.
Fanatics were relentless and the Seven who had spent the last four years crisscrossing the globe, often encountering races and groups willing to die to possess an artefact, could personally attest to this fact.
While Josiah, JD and Nathan were ensuring the modestly sized property was secured, Ezra was presently in the study with Orin and his daughter, Mary. Having served with the Professor when Orin Travis was the commander of their regiment during the war, Ezra had always admired the man who as a soldier, never allowed his men to ride into battle without him. As a commander, he had been fair and decisive, treating every one of them with almost paternal affection and while his manner was scholarly, he was wise with more than just academic knowledge.
When Chris Larabee had been at his lowest, it was Orin who came to his rescue, giving Chris a purpose to which the former army captain was undoubtedly suited. Thanks to Orin, Chris had sought them all out and saved them from the drudgery their life had become since the end of the war. In setting them on a new path, he improved all their fortunes and there was not one member of the seven who would not gratefully lay down his life for Orin Travis for that blessing.
“Is Mr Larabee always so paranoid?” Mary Travis asked as she lay stretched across the leather sofa, while her father sat across Ezra in his favourite of the two wing chairs in front of the lit fireplace. While it was not terribly cold, the single log on the fire had warmed the room enough to make it comfortable for the rest of the evening.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Ezra had to admit. Even though his arm was in a sling fashioned by Nathan, Ezra’s Remington model 51 pistol was within reach should danger come calling. “However, in these matters, his instincts for danger are quite sharp and if he believes the Erran might make a further attempt to retrieve the Heart, it is not a claim I would take lightly.”
“He’s right Mary,” Orin said to her gently, aware that it rankled at her fiercely independent nature to be told what to do. “Chris is seldom wrong about these things and judging by what took place tonight, it’s clear the Erran are escalating their attempts to retrieve the Heart.”
Mary frowned, thinking about the man with his icy coloured eyes and his unbelievably chauvinistic manner and wondered how on Earth, he’d managed to stay married without his wife doing him serious harm. “I suppose, it was always going to get this way the instant the Heart was uncovered.”
“Will was right about that,” Orin said with a sigh, taking a sip from his own glass of cognac, before staring into the amber contents, his expression softening with sadness. “He always understood it better than the rest of us.”
“I’m so sorry dad,” Mary offered softly, aware her father’s heart was still raw from the loss of his oldest friend.
“They killed him,” Orin stared at Ezra. “Will always expected they would, because he knew what it was, he understood the curse around it better than the rest of us.”
“The curse?” Ezra sat up and paid attention. “I was unaware of a curse surrounding the Tablet of Destiny.”
“It isn’t a curse as such,” Orin quickly clarified. “It’s more of the mythology surrounding the tablet. Although the way Will spoke of it, he actually believed it supernatural elements and unfortunately, some events did play out rather coincidentally to fit his paranoia.”
“Oh?” The gambler remarked with interest.
“Well, for instance, none of us have sons. According to the mythology, whoever possesses the Tablet of Destiny would sire an incarnation of Tiamat, the Mesopotamian goddess who first created the Tablet as a gift to her son. Part of the ritual to give the Tablet its power of uncreation is to provide a vessel in which Tiamat could inhabit when she returned to the mortal plane. Only Tiamat can unlock its power. And since Tiamat is female...”
“The sacrificial lamb, in this case, would be the same,” Ezra concluded.
“Well that’s just lovely,” Mary snorted. “If we’re not used as chattel, we’re used as sacrifices.”
“It’s just a story,” Orin smiled and then faced Ezra. “However, Will believed because we each had a Pillar, we were cursed to have only daughters who would act as the receptacle for Tiamat’s spirit since we each had the potential to unlock the power of the Tablet. So, when not one of us produced a son, Will started to buy into the story. Not that I’m complaining of course,” he said giving Mary an affectionate smile which she returned. “But the fact is, Hank had Sarah, Donnie had Julia and Will and I had, Alex and Mary.”
“I can see why he might be concerned,” Ezra remarked, seeing the greater danger he wondered if Orin was aware of. “Orin, it may not simply be the pieces they’re acquiring. Eventually, they may come to realise,” he paused and looked at Mary. “They may need your daughters.”
Orin’s expression darkened revealing to Ezra he was unsurprised by this possibility. He cast a glance of worry at Mary and with that one gesture, revealed to Ezra how much it preyed on his mind.
“I know.,” he admitted. “Will suspected it might be the case. When the Heart was finally found, he was almost panicked. He was terrified they wouldn’t just come for the Pillars, but they would try to take the girls. Maybe one or all of them. He wasn’t sure. It’s why he went out of his way to make sure his Pillar was well hidden. If the Erran can’t find the Tablet, then there would be no reason for them to need the girls.”
“Dad,” Mary sat up. “Do you think that’s why they took Alex?”
“I’m not sure,” Orin confessed. “I think it’s possible. The Erran didn’t make a move towards you at the museum.”
“That simply might have been because of a lack of opportunity. If I am not mistaken, you acquitted yourself quite well when you did encounter these fanatics.”
Mary shrugged. She’d learned how to fight when she had first become a journalist, having realised she needed to defend herself in the instance the pursuit of a story landed her in trouble. Spending time with Crystal Bennett, one half of the famous Bennett Sisters who in their day displayed their skills in boxing, wrestling and fencing on Vaudeville, Mary learned how to defend herself under the lady’s tutelage.
“And Alex was alone out there,” Orin pointed out, somewhat proud of his daughter at cultivating that particular ability.
Ezra nodded in agreement at Orin’s assertion. “The unfortunate passing of Sarah Larabee places her out of their reach but, what of the last member of your set?”
“Donnie’s daughter Julia?” Orin remarked. “I’m not sure where she is. After Donnie passed, Eleanor took Julia home to England. We lost touch after she married again. “
“It might be prudent to try and find the young lady,” Ezra remarked. “She could be in danger.”
“I can use my resources at the paper to track her down,” Mary suggested. “I’ve got a few contacts in London who might be able to track Julia down.”
“She might be going under her step father’s name,” Orin suggested. “I believe it’s Pemberton.”
*****
Josiah Sanchez scanned the street beyond the manicured lawn of Orin Travis’s Huning Castle home and saw no one on the street, yet he felt uneasy. The area was largely undeveloped, and the professor's home was separated by his neighbour by a row of spruce pines that cast long shadows on the single lane road running past the place. Although he saw no movement amongst the trees, the signs of life were plenty. Horned owls and insect chirping sang their nocturnal songs to the full moon beaming down at them.
While Chris Larabee’s paranoia was justified after the incident at the museum, Josiah wondered if he was right on this occasion about the Erran resurfacing so soon after their aborted effort to reacquire the Heart. Clutching the Barretta in his hand, Josiah scanned the area once more and started to withdraw into the house, when a sharp pain stabbed at his neck like a horsefly had decided to take a good bite out of him.
“Damn,” he cursed, reaching for the back of his neck where the pain was concentrated. When his fingers grasped the small, sharp object, he knew immediately what it was. Long and thin, Josiah stared at it in his palm, noticing the small spot of blood at the pointed tip where it penetrated his skin. It was a blow dart. They’d spent enough time in the jungles of South America for him to recognise immediately what it was.
“Nathan...!” He tried to shout, knowing what was coming next but the concoction introduced into his body, worked fast and the words escaped his lips in little more than a whisper. When he slid to his knees, Josiah didn’t even notice. The floor beneath him seemed to disappear and suddenly, the tumble he took seemed very long and he was plunging through the darkness like he’d stepped into an abyss.
Except it was an abyss he knew all too well.
When he raised his head, he knew immediately he was at the creek. Their creek, his mind thought subconsciously. He could smell the light pungent odour of algae clinging to a cluster of rocks at the edge of the water. As his stomach clenched, he saw himself surrounded by green grass and wild irises, remembering with sadness that it was her favourite. The creek looked like any other in the wilds of Colorado where he grew up, framed with cattails and coloured by smartweed, their pinkish flowers protruding through the water, managing to penetrate the discards of bur-reed floating across the surface.
Josiah always marvelled at how beautiful it was and often thought it was here, he felt closest to God, as if this place was the crucible of all his good works. When he sat here on the grass, Josiah thought this was how Adam must have felt during his first night on Earth, marvelling at the beauty of God’s imagination. Gazing at the stars above, he took in the world knowing the almighty was continuing his artistry on the canvas of the still-forming universe.
And yet it was here, he broke with God forever.
His God was nowhere that capricious. No, the break was entirely of his doing. As he remained on his hands and knees, staring at the creek, Josiah wished he could be anywhere but here. Above him, the moon looked on with cold indifference, perfectly aware of his crime and offering him no sympathy. In the waking world, far removed from this daydream or nightmare he found himself trapped, Josiah had never gone back to the creek after this night.
This place was the source of his eternal penance, where he failed his God by forgetting the Almighty hadn’t just created man, but also woman. That giving one’s heart to a woman was also part of his plan and there was no sin in it. All his life, Josiah knew what he wanted to be, a man of God. He had felt it from the moment he heard the Lord’s prayer as a child and knew nothing but the wish to stand in God’s house and serve him. Josiah had wanted it so much. His father, also a preacher, never seemed to have the light Josiah felt, and it was this that caused the rift between them.
When Josiah went to seminary school to begin his journey to the priesthood, it had been the happiest day of his life. Until he met Emma.
Against all good sense, he had fallen for her hard and in secret, they conducted their love affair. She was the daughter of the local baker, with sun-streaked hair of dark gold and blue eyes that danced with gold dust. He was smitten for the first time and it was the lack of experience that kept Josiah from keeping it from going as far as it had. By the time he realised the danger, it was too late, and he was forced with a choice.
To serve God or to be with his darling Emma.
On the banks of this very creek, he’d told her he was not willing to give up God for her even though they were not far away from the spot where they’d surrendered their virginity to each other. She had wept but made no demands of him, uttered no words of anger or bitterness at having come second to God. She was raised by good Christian folk and understood his fealty to the Almighty. Josiah had kissed her on the cheek and told her he’d carry her in his heart forever, but this had to end. She agreed.
Getting to his feet, Josiah felt himself drawn to the edge of the creek, even though he had no wish to go. He stared up at the stars and saw the moon had turned its back on him, it’s now crescent shape squinting in distaste. The clouds flew across the sky, like they too, couldn’t wait to get away from him.
Josiah stopped at the embankment and knew what he would find. He knew it and yet he couldn't turn away. This scene was burned into his memory after twenty-six years of nightmares that could only be quelled by liquor. It was why he so readily took care of Hannah, not only because she was his sister, but because he would not fail another woman again.
She lay on the water, face down, her gold hair spread around her in swirls, her white night dressed billowing about her. Like he had so many times before, in his nightmares, he rushed into the water, not caring that it was too late. In his dreams, he lived with the hope perhaps once he might reach her in time. Even as the cold water swirled around his ankles, sending chills through his body as he waded quickly towards the figure in white, Josiah was sobbing in despair.
He was still weeping when he reached her, cursing himself for not realising when he made his speech to her that God would always come first, she was facing ruin because of their baby. She had kept silent, refusing to compound her sin by trapping him in marriage and bearing his resentment for taking him away from his calling. He had gone to the creek that night to say goodbye, unaware she had already done it.
Holding her dead body in his arms Josiah wept in anguish, feeling the cold flesh and knowing then and there, he would never be able to go to his God...
*****
After the pain had dwindled, Nathan stumbled forward trying to remember where he was. The last time the healer looked, he was standing in a rather stately home in the middle of nowhere outside of Albuquerque. He was walking along the porch, making sure the area was clear of any trespassers, not that anyone could really sneak up on the place, except the side Josiah was patrolling, with its small forest of spruce pines. The terrain he was studying was covered in knee-high grass and punctuated by trees, a good distance from each other and the grounds of the place.
Nathan was confident, they’d spot anyone before they got too close. He should have known he was tempting fate.
He knew what was happening the instant the fog descended on him. He’d been dosed with something and it was strong. He could feel the warmth of its poison filling his veins, infecting his body and his mind with each beat of his heart. He did a little better than Josiah, who was presently lying on the grass on the other side of the house, weeping openly about someone called Emma, only he could see.
“JD!” Nathan called out before the fog surrounded him completely.
Panicked, he flailed his hands desperately, trying to dispel it even though somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew it was an illusion. A sudden explosion of artillery fire blew the fog away like the Lord had let out his breath in a sudden exhale. When it cleared, he was standing in the middle of a battlefield. He knew which one immediately.
He was standing there, surrounded by mud and death, hearing artillery fire exploding in his ears as the smell hit him. Not just of blood or the scent of burnt gunpowder, but the more insidious smells, the piss and shit expelled when a body stopped working. There was a lot of that on this day. He stood there with his medical kit, confronted by so many dead, he didn’t know what to do. They lay on the plain with their horses, with bodies broken and bleeding, like an uncovered graveyard.
*******
“Come with me mister!” The boy grabbed his hand. Nathan stared in shock at this child wearing the uniform of a cavalry soldier. He was so scrawny, with dark hair and staring at Nathan, pleading in his cobalt coloured eyes.
“Where are we going?” Nathan had asked because there was just so many injured, he had to get to work, had to save them all. The boy didn’t answer, choosing instead to guide him by the hand and drag him across the muddy field. Nathan followed, his boots squelching in mud and blood as he followed the kid, ignoring the sounds of weeping and screaming. There were so many, so many he had to help and yet he was following the boy.
“Ezra!” The boy skidded to his knees, next to a soldier about his age, a blond man with sea green eyes, wearing a chest wound oozing so much blood, it was turning the mud into a red paste.
“Calm yourself, Master Tanner,” the man who was clutching a deck of cards like some men held a rosary, was staring into the sky. “I am still here.”
“I brought a medic!” The boy said turning to Nathan, “he’s gonna help you.”
Nathan was not about to make any promises. He couldn’t. Not with that gaping hole in the man’s chest. This was no place for battlefield surgery even if he knew how to fix a wound like that, which he did not.
The man blinked and looked at him. Nathan knew what was running through his mind. He’d heard the man’s accent and knew the wounded soldier was from the south. Nathan expected him to refuse the help because while the kid saw a medic, this man probably saw a nigger, and nothing more. Nathan braced himself for the insult and prepared to ignore it no matter how offensive the son of a bitch was going to be. Words, Nathan could tolerate, but not his guilt if he allowed someone to die because of it.
“I seriously doubt you will be able to do much for me, but I appreciate the attempt nonetheless,” his would-be patient said instead.
Nathan stared at him in surprise, not expecting that answer. “Well, now you’ve hurt my feelings. At least let me try before you go thinking I’m going to let you die.”
“Be my guest,” the southerner said weakly. “Although we could make it more interesting if we could put some money on it.”
Nathan remembered giving the man a look, wondering what kind of lunatic tried to gamble while he was bleeding out on the battlefield.
In the end, it didn’t matter because he had saved Ezra Standish that day, with young Vin Tanner watching closely. What he didn’t realise until much later, this southerner with a penchant for scams and talking like he’d swallowed a dictionary, would become his best friend.
But this was not the scene that confronted Nathan as he stood on the battlefield now. There was no sign of any scrawny child covered in blood, wearing a uniform too big for him. All there was, were broken wounded bodies calling for him, begging him for help. They surrounded him, their desperate eyes pleading for help but there was just too many. He saw their sunken eyes as they dragged themselves across the ground, past the dead bodies of fallen comrades and limbs blown apart by mortar fire. He heard their horses braying pitifully, haunting the air because he could do nothing for them.
He felt them clawing at his ankles, their fingers digging into his skin and their desperate eyes trapping him with guilt and futility.
“Please Mister!”
Nathan turned to the familiar voice and then nearly screamed because he could only stare at Vin Tanner, looking at him with half a face. It looked like someone had shot Vin in the head and blown apart half his skull. He looked at Nathan with his skull cracked and exposed. Vin reached for Nathan with his small hand, missing fingers, while bloated flies buzzed around the open sore of his head.
“You gotta help my friend.”
And as Nathan looked over his shoulder, he saw the rest of the seven were there too, looking like rotting corpses on the battlefield, smiling at him.
CHAPTER NINE:
CHIVALRY
When JD Dunne came running along the corner of the wrap around porch surrounding the Travis home, he expected Nathan to be facing off mad cultists in red robes. Instead, he found the former medic lying against the wooden floorboards, his eyes staring blankly into some unknown place beyond JD’s ability to see. JD’s heart clenched at the sight of the healer, before he raised his eyes to the darkness, searching for the enemy he knew was there but had yet to see.
As the newest member of the team, JD often felt out of his depth, even though he had proven his value numerous times to Chris Larabee over the past year. When he had come into the company of the six men who were in their way accomplished as they were eclectic, JD had never expected their acceptance. In the beginning, he thought he was tolerated but in truth, as Vin admitted one night when they were both drinking hard at Paloma’s, their group felt most complete when there was a youngest for them to care about. During the war, Vin had played the role but now it was JD’s turn.
“Nathan,” JD dropped to his knees next to the tall black man who was facing away from him. He was tossing his head from side to side, his face filled with anguish and JD wondered what terrible thing he was seeing during his delirium. A spot of blood against Nathan’s collar made JD examine the skin near the fabric and he soon discovered the small pinprick against Nathan’s throat. It had struck him just beneath the ear and whatever it was that penetrated his skin, it was small enough to reduce the man to his current incapacitated condition.
A slight whoosh of sound suddenly broke against the grain of the crickets chirping and nocturnal quiet. JD turned around in its direction only to feel something bite into his arm. It was strong enough to penetrate the fabric of his tuxedo jacket, until he could feel it entering his skin, no doubt in the same way it had done to Nathan and possibly Josiah.
“Aw crap...” he started to curse and felt the warmth spreading over his body, aware that in seconds he would be caught in the grips of the same trap that had ensnared his friends.
******
“You’re finished,” a derisive voice spoke, and JD looked up to see Peter Nichols staring at him wearing a smirk on his face after it was all said and done.
JD sat outside Professor Orin Travis’s office, his knuckles still bandaged from the nurse’s treatment, seeing doom in Mariette Nichols face as she walked past with her son, Peter. The dress on her back was worth his college tuition and she regarded him like something left behind on the sole of her shoe. Her son, sporting the considerable black eye and split lip JD had given him earlier, grinned in satisfaction.
As he passed by JD, Peter made a slashing motion across his throat, gloating with triumph because money and position had given him the last laugh and JD saw his future, disintegrating with that smarmy smile. Leaning heavily back into the bench, JD blinked slowly, aware of just how bad this was going to go, even before he was summoned into the Professor’s office. Turning away from mother and son, he decided to stare at them would change nothing and served to remind him what a moment of temper was going to cost him.
“Mr Dunne,” Gloria Potter, the Professor’s very efficient secretary interrupted his defeated thoughts. “Professor Travis will see you now.”
JD remembered how he’d been shown into the office, his heart was pounding so loudly, they were almost a drum beat. He entered the dignified room with its shelves of leather-bound books, its wood panel walls and the sturdy walnut desk behind which Orin Travis held court. The smell of old books always comforted him but not today, not when he saw Travis looking at him with a sombre expression that did not bode well for the rest of the meeting.
“How bad is it Sir?” JD asked before the Professor could speak. Normally speaking out of turn was out of character for JD who revered Travis, not merely as the head of the college and the curator of the university museum, but as a man he respected.
“They’ve revoked your scholarship, son.”
From the moment he calmed down after beating up Peter Nichols for calling him the bastard child of some pick me up girl, JD expected the worst. Months of bullying from Peter, a member of Albuquerque’s more prominent families, had resulted in an explosion of fury JD had been unable to control. His ma had worked all her life to make sure he had money enough to get him through college with the help of his scholarship. She’d died not long after he’d graduated, and JD still felt the sting of her loss.
Although his father died during the war, Peter had taken great relish in promoting the rumour JD was a bastard. While such insults were something he’d been accustomed to all his life, hearing his mother being called a tramp was too much for him to bear so soon after her death. He’d gone after Peter, unleashing months of pent-up fury, needing to be restrained by his classmates before he caused the snotty bastard too much harm.
Now it appeared Nichols had the last laugh after all.
JD felt the air escape out of his lungs like someone had deflated him like a balloon. He slumped forward, bracing himself on the edge of the Professor’s desk, knowing his life was over. He would become just another face on the breadlines, consigned to the scrap heap of unrealised potential. All that study and effort had been for nothing. He wanted to cry but he would not let the Professor see how devastating this news was. At the very least, he’d walk out of here with his head held high.
“I’m sorry Mr Dunne,” the Professor apologised. “I did everything I could to keep this from happening, but Mariette Nichols has a lot of pull. Aside from being a member of the school board, many of the others are her friends. She wanted you expelled but the compromise was the loss of your scholarship.”
Compromise? JD almost snorted. Mariette Nichols knew perfectly well he was on his own, relying on the pittance his mother had saved all her life to send him to college. Even then it was his scholarship that got him here. What she left hadn’t been enough to cover his living expenses for the years of study. To make ends meet, JD worked nights as a busboy. Without a scholarship, he couldn’t afford to remain in school. It wasn’t an expulsion, but it finished him just the same.
“Well that’s it then,” JD managed to say, his mood descending into resignation since anger would avail him nothing. “I’m done.”
Peter was right about that, he thought ruefully.
“Not necessarily,” the Professor countered. “If you can make the tuition, you can stay.”
“I don’t have that kind of money,” JD stated shaking his head, wondering if the man knew the suggestion was a carrot dangling out of his reach. “I’ve been working nights just to stay on campus.”
Travis didn’t speak for a long time, eyeing him with deep contemplation. With sadness, JD thought how much he would miss being in the man’s classes, how lively their debates had been about history and ancient cultures. He had an ear for languages and had picked up several since he began his study and now it was all over. The dreams of his future, turning to ash in the wake of his fiery temper. Then again, it was probably what Peter wanted.
And then just as JD was about to slip into complete despair, Travis spoke again and said the words that changed his life.
“Are you willing to take a sabbatical for a year?”
JD stared at him with impatience. “It don’t matter if I take a year off, I still won’t be able to make enough money...”
“I know,” Travis stopped him, gesturing JD to let him speak. “But some friends of my need a good translator and someone with an understanding of ancient cultures. The work is unorthodox and dangerous, but if I know Chris Larabee, he’ll pay you fairly and what you could make in a year, would pay your college tuition, without you needing to bus tables.”
JD had thought it was too good to be true and the truth was, it wasn’t too good to be true.
It was better.
******
Instead of what truly happened, JD now found himself standing at the end of a line. An endless breadline filled with grim faces and desperation. He looked at his clothes and saw himself clad in workman’s clothes, no different than the others standing in this conveyor belt of misery. As he stood there, freezing in the cold, hands digging into his pockets trying to gain some warmth, he looked down the road and saw a car speeding past. It was shiny and gleaming, catching all the sun there was on this dismally grey day.
As it sped past him, he saw Peter Nichols through the window, making the same slashing gesture across his throat, grinning.
****
When enough time passed and none of his associates returned to the room, Ezra Standish began to get concerned. Despite his injury, he left the safety and warmth of the Professor’s study with instructions to the man and his daughter to remain where they were. Armed with his Remington, Ezra discarded the sling even though his shoulder still ached. However, if there was trouble brewing, he had no wish to be hindered by the restriction on his arm.
Moving stealthily through the house, he arrived at the front door in no time. Josiah had been keeping a vigil on this section of the house, facing the lone street. On the other side was spruce trees, providing too much cover for an enemy to use to their advantage. It took him but a split second to spot Josiah who was lying on the floor, muttering incoherently to himself. No doubt experiencing whatever troubling hallucinations he must have been dosed with, to reduce him to such a state.
Perhaps it was the years spent studying the nuances of behaviour, no matter how subtle, to hone his skills as a grifter, that allowed him to see the sudden movement in the corner of his eye. The figure darted out of the shadows quickly, brandishing the tools with which she intended to incapacitate him. He barely had a second to step out of its line of fire before the poisoned dart was flying through the air. It hit the hard obstruction of wood, small needle incapable of penetrating the surface before it tumbled to the floor.
Without thinking twice, he opened fire. Shooting into the shadows, where the robed figure had vanished, the gunshots only serve to shake loose from the foliage, the men awaiting amongst the tall grass and spruce trees, ready to attack. There were at least five of them. While his instincts told him to grab Josiah and pull the big man through the doorway, Ezra also knew with his arm the way it was, he could not manage it without getting them both killed.
Instead, he wasted no time taking aim and firing at the first Erran he saw. The explosion of gunfire scattered the others but this time, they were not armed with blades. At their dispersal, Ezra hurried towards Josiah, hoping the delay might allow him to get the big man to his feet. He no sooner wrapped his hand around Josiah’s arm when a bullet whizzed past his ear.
“Oh bother!” Ezra cursed and was almost forced to flatten himself on the floorboards when it struck the wall behind him, sending splinters in all directions.
“Mr Sanchez!” Ezra hissed, “this is no time to be lying down on the job!”
Unfortunately, Josiah was beyond hearing him.
The older man was caught completely in his delirium, calling out a name the seven knew well. It was one they only heard when the man was in a drunken stupor and though he never explained who she was to him, it was clear, she was someone he loved dearly, whose loss was so deep, recovery seemed impossible. Ezra saw the shooter appear again through the trees and returned fire, this time, his aim was better, and he saw the man spasm in pain before collapsing into the grass.
“MR SANCHEZ! MOVE!” Ezra repeated himself more forcefully, using all the strength he could muster to haul Josiah to his feet, his good arm screaming in protest at the exertion since he needed his injured one to fire. The forceful demand provoked Josiah into moving, though Ezra doubted he was aware of anything beyond his hallucination. The two of them stumbled through the front door, just as bullets exploded behind them.
He saw one graze Josiah’s leg without the big man having the slightest awareness of it. Josiah was still lost in his stupor, moaning for the woman he’d lost, even as he trailed blood across the front landing. A surge of uncharacteristic panic filled the gambler at that moment as he pulled Josiah to safety, wondering what condition JD and Nathan were in presently. He had heard no gunshots from the other side of the house and could not imagine the Erran attacking from only one direction, not after what they’d done at the museum.
Almost on cue, he heard glass breaking and knew the Erran were about to invade the house unimpeded. Shutting the front door with a loud slam, even as more bullets dug into the wood from the outside, Ezra got to his feet and hurried towards the breakage. He was running up the corridor when he heard more alarming sounds, this time of scuffling, like those belonging to bodies in a struggle.
Ezra burst into the room and saw Mary Travis writhing against the grip of the behemoth he and Josiah had confronted at the museum. He had his massive arm locked around her throat, prepared to snap her slender neck if he did not get what he wanted. The man’s eyes widened and then narrowed with calculation as his gaze brushed Ezra’s and he tightened his grip, turning Mary’s face red from suffocation.
“Give me the Heart NOW!” He bellowed, speaking not to Ezra but to Orin Travis.
Ezra saw the hesitation in Orin’s face at handing over the heart but overriding that was the fear for his daughter’s life and knew there and then, he would fold. How could he not? Ezra wasn’t about to let him face the choice and aimed his gun at the man’s head.
“You won’t be alive long enough to pull the trigger,” Ezra warned smoothly. His Remington was raised to put a bullet in the man’s forehead f he did not let Mary go this instant.
“The same might be said for you,” the voice that brushed his ear like a lover’s kiss was decidedly female, with a hint of an exotic accent. “Put down the gun or you’ll die where you stand.”
To illustrate the point, something pressed up against his spine that felt like the barrel of a gun.
Ezra exhaled with a frown, giving Mary a look of apology at being helpless to stop what was about to happen. Even if he chose to ignore his assailant and make the shot, it was likely he would be dead before he pulled the trigger. The inconvenience of it annoyed him to no end. With an almost imperceptible expression on his face, Ezra allowed the barrel of his gun to lower, his finger holding it by the trigger guard.
“Now,” she spoke behind Ezra. “You will give us the Heart and your pillar.”
“I can give you the Heart,” Orin declared defeated, his expression grim because he knew he could not bear the thought of any harm coming to Mary, even if it was likely these Erran would kill them all as soon as they got their hands on the artefact. “But the Pillar isn’t here.”
“Where is it?” She demanded. Her ire at his answer was reflected by the sharp jab in Ezra’s back.
“It’s in a vault at the Albuquerque bank,” Orin answered without hesitation.
“Get the Heart!” The man barked. “Do it now!”
“Professor...” Ezra started to object when he felt the cold steel shoved painfully against his spine to warn him back into silence.
“It would be most unfortunate if I have to put a big hole in your infidel back!” The woman hissed.
“Come now,” Ezra said smoothly, “I find your intolerance most offensive. After all, I did not bring up the fact that I was being held at gunpoint by a woman. It certainly isn’t fair for you to remark about my religious affiliations.”
“Be silent!” She ordered, and Ezra noticed the Professor retrieving the Heart from where he had stored it, inside a wall safe in his office, shortly after returning to the residence.
Ezra knew the instant they got their hands on the Heart, there was only one thing to be done and with more windows being broken and the door kicked in, he knew they would soon be surrounded by the Erran. The Erran had planned to kill everyone at the museum, Ezra had no reason to believe that the cultist intended to change their pattern of behaviour.
“Dad don’t do it!” Mary managed to rasp as Orin approached her and her captor with the heart.
In retaliation for her outburst, the man snapped his arm against her windpipe, turning her words into a hoarse groan of pain.
“Here take it!” Orin snapped, the action having the desired effect on him and he handed over the artefact to the Erran. Mary’s face was almost purple, with tears streaming down her cheeks from her bloodshot eyes.
Her condition infuriated him, and Ezra declared coldly. “Far be it for me to behave anything but chivalrously towards a woman, but I can endure this no more.”
Without warning, he snapped his head back hard, striking the woman’s head with the back of his skull. No sooner than the action was done, he spun around like a dancer doing the jitterbug and shoved away the hand holding the gun. She pulled the trigger just as one of the Erran entered the room and blew out the back of his head. Brain matter splattered against the wall as the man collapsed to the ground.
The distraction gave Mary time to act as the hand around her throat loosened when the behemoth saw Ezra snatching the gun away from the woman behind him. Mary brought her foot down against his leg and dug her nails into his arm, preparing to take flesh with her.
“WHORE!” He snapped and swatted her with a backhanded blow. Mary tumbled against a small table against the wall, landing badly. Ezra winced when he heard the furniture breaking beneath her.
“Mary!” Orin shouted. However, before he could go to her, he was intercepted by the towering man whose only interest at this point was the artefact he was holding. Snatching it out of Orin’s grip while the Professor was still staring at his daughter in worry, his face split into a grin of triumph.
The woman whose gun Ezra had liberated instead pulled out a long, thin object he recognised immediately as a blowgun, no doubt what she used to incapacitate the others when she saw her compatriot had the heart.
“Krestos! GO!” She ordered. “NOW!”
The man called Krestos barked orders at more of the Erran who entering the room, intending to deal with Ezra before he made a running jump through the window. With his considerable bulk, he smashed through the window like a wrecking ball, leaving fragments of wood and glass across the floor and rug, in his wake. The curtains billowed inwardly as the chill of the night air was swept into the room.
Ezra now, armed with two guns, aimed her own weapon at her face, while the other was brandished in the Erran closing in. Orin had rushed over to Mary, who was lying in the ruins of the table she had landed on. As they closed in, Ezra said smoothly. “Call them off,” he warned her, “or the first bullet goes through your head.”
She looked at him with a smile. “I think not.” Her eyes narrowed with calculation, proceeding to lift the blowgun to her lips. “I think there is too much-misplaced chivalry in you to shoot a woman and even if you did, my brothers will cut you all down to pieces the instant you pull the trigger.”
“Then I guess we have an interesting predicament ahead of us, my dear lady.”
“I’d sooner you not,” Chris Larabee’s voice suddenly spoke as the leader of the Seven reached a hand around her face and yanked away the blowgun. She spun around to face the new arrival just as gunshots broke out from the window and from the hallway entrance. Ezra dropped to his feet to avoid being shot, scrambling towards Orin and Mary to ensure they did not get caught by the crossfire.
As Vin and Buck cut down the Erran in the room and outside of it, the woman glared at Chris Larabee and said with a hiss. “This is the second time tonight we have faced each other. The third time will be the last. Stay out of our affairs if you wish to live.”
Without warning, she dropped an ampule against the floor, the small glass orb shattered spectacularly. Instinctively, Chris stepped back, having been on the receiving end of this woman’s potions once already. However, what it contained was nowhere as noxious as what had disorientated him previously. Nevertheless, it hissed as soon as it was exposed to air, turning into a thick, enveloping cloud of lavender smoke that spread across the room in a thick, obscuring fog.
“We have the heart! Withdraw!” She yelled in a language that sounded very much like Arabic.
And like wraiths, the Erran receded into the fog and vanished.