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 backwards to avoid being disemboweled 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 number. 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, whom 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
