Evy, Lillian and Jonathon were huddled, in the darkness of night, around the fire O'Connell had made, before he went off to collect his money from the Americans. Evy was sat between her elder siblings, with a shawl wrapped around her for warmth and comfort. Lillian was quiet, which wasn't so unusual for her, but Evy and Jonathon both picked up on it.
"What do you suppose killed him?" Evy questioned.
"Did you ever see him eat?" Jonathon replied. Lillian looked up as Rick sat down beside her, shot gun in hand. She raised an eyebrow at him, but he simply shrugged.
"Seems that our American friends had a little misfortune of their own today," He said, putting the gun down in front of him. "Three of their diggers were…melted."
"What?" Evy asked at the same time that Jonathon questioned, "How?".
"Salt acid. Pressurized salt acid. Some kind of ancient booby trap." Rick answered.
"Maybe this place really is cursed." Jonathon said, just before a soft gush of wind blew through their little camp in the eeriest way possible, almost blowing out their campfire. Rick and Jonathon exchanged a look, and Lillian slapped Rick on the arm.
"For goodness' sake, you two!"
"You don't believe in curses?" Rick asked, as he poked the fire to keep it going.
"No, I don't know what I believe." Lillian replied.
"We believe, being the sensible women we are, that if we can see it and touch it, it's real." Evy insisted and explained for her sister, as she watched Lillian sink back into her own private world once more, a contemplative expression gracing her face.
"I believe in being prepared." Rick said, as he chambered a round into his shotgun, making Evy jump with the noise it made.
"Let's see what our friend the warden believed in." Jonathon said, as he picked up the man's bag, and began to rummage through his belongings. Lillian rolled her eyes; Jonathon really had no respect for the dead.
The group was silent as the Carnahan man rifled through the pack of a dead man, until suddenly Jonathon cried out in pain, setting them all on edge. He yelped in pain, making Evy scream, and Rick and Lillian aim their guns at the bag in his hand.
"What?!" Rick demanded as Lillian questioned, "What is it?!".
"Just a broken bottle," Jonathan answered, lifting the aforementioned broken bottle from the bag, and inspecting it. "Glenlivet. Twelve years old! Well, he may have been a stinky fellow, but he had good taste."
Jonathon knocked back a gulp of the alcohol, and Evy smiled at her brother's humour. However, the distant whinnying of multiple horses set Rick and Lillian on edge. The woman climbed to her feet, instantly moving towards the sound, with the man following her, but not before he had given the two remaining siblings his shotgun for protection. Lillian recognised her sister's voice not too far behind her and Rick, asking them to wait for her, and then Jonathon calling her back, only for him to follow as well.
And then they arrived, hollering like mad men upon black and white horses. And all hell broke loose. It was a scene that felt familiar to Lillian; the men in black, the mayhem, the gunfire, the screaming and shouting. It was all familiar, as was Lillian's reaction. She whipped out her pistols, and began to systematically take the invaders out, one by one. These raiders had rifles, and torches and were setting fire to the Americans' tents. Lillian and Rick sought out cover behind one of the many pillars, her on one side and him on another. They worked as a team, and found that they worked quite well together.
Even Evy managed to shoot a man off his horse. Lillian was quite proud of her baby sister in that moment. Jonathon stayed crouched behind a wall, sipping on the whisky he'd found in the warden's satchel, and occasionally firing at one of the raiders.
Lillian focused on shooting as many of the black riders as she could, before she heard Jonathon shouting for Rick. She turned, putting her back to the pillar, and spotted Jonathon running from one of the riders. Rick nodded at her once, before he dived off of the higher ground that they had situated themselves on and tackled the rider off of his stallion.
Lillian kept firing and taking men out, but her eyes flickered constantly to the fight Rick had found himself in. He had shot the man's blade from his hand, but got distracted by another, and then found his pistol knocked out of his hand. So he dove into a roll, and lit a stick of dynamite, and brandished it against the raider, who paused upon seeing it and straightened up out of his defensive pose.
"Enough!" He called, and his men stopped fighting against them. Lillian still had her pistols raised, even though her ammunition had just run out. "We will shed no more blood, but you must leave. Leave this place or die. You have one day."
And then he remounted his horse, and rode away, just as quickly as he and his men had arrived. Rick stopped the flame on the dynamite, before it exploded in his hand. And then Rick rushed to Lillian, who had slumped to the ground, a hand pressed to her side.
"Are you all right?" He questioned, as he helped her to her feet. O'Connell then tugged her hand away from her side, and saw a little blood. He raised his eyes to hers and she smiled at him, not appearing to be in much pain.
"I'm fine. It's just a graze." And his eyes confirmed that. He'd dress it in a moment, with some medical supplies he'd managed to barter from a woman back in the village they had stopped at.
"Are you sure you're okay?" He said, pulling her chin up so she'd look directly into his eyes. Then he rubbed some dirt of her cheek gently, so gently it almost felt like a caress. Which it was, but they pretended it wasn't.
"Thank you." She replied, her hands on his chest, careful not to smear blood on his white shirt.
"That proves it. Old Seti's fortune has got to be under this sand," Daniels said, getting the attention of most around him. "For them to protect it like this, there's got to be treasure down there."
"Or maybe they're protecting us." Lillian said, earning quizzical looks from all the men around her. She hadn't believed in the curse, until today. What with the unexplainable death of the warden, the general bad feeling that the city filled her with, and the reappearance of the tattooed men in black robes, she wasn't exactly sure that a curse was so farfetched anymore.
"Or they know there's treasure down there." Henderson insisted.
"These men are desert people," Rick informed them, his arms still around Lillian, hers still on his chest. They didn't realise their close proximity. "They value water, not gold."
"You know, maybe just at night we could combine forces?" Mr Burns suggested, and Lillian turned her eyes to him as he stood just behind Rick, and saw that he had been halfway through shaving when they were attacked.
Lillian looked at Rick, nodding at him and allowing him to deal with it. She moved away, untangling herself from him, and walked over to Evy and Jonathon. She examined each of her siblings in turn, checking them over for injuries, ignoring their protests until she was satisfied they were in one piece.
Evy gasped when she spotted Lillian's tiny surface wound.
"You're hurt!" She exclaimed, and Jonathon got a little concerned, and crouched down to inspect it closer. It wasn't bleeding any more, but it would need to be cleaned as it had a little sand in the wound.
"I'm fine, baby sister. It's just a scratch. Nothing to worry about," She said, as Rick strode over to them. She gestured her thumb at him as he stopped beside her and started to reassure her sister. "O'Connell is going to clean it and I'll place a bandage from my pack over it. I'll be fine."
Evy seemed placated with her sister's reassurance, and they went back to camp to calm themselves down after all of the excitement. It may have taken a drink or two to convince Lillian to actually let Rick clean her wound, and dress it, but she, Jonathon and Evy were soon drunk. O'Connell had refused to join in their drinking, and was a little surprised that Lillian had. He hadn't pegged her as the type, nor her sister, but he figured that she was stressed.
After a little while, Jonathon and Evy were snuggled up together, the bottle of whisky tucked into the curve of Jonathon's arm as he and his youngest sister slept peacefully. Somehow, though not really surprisingly, the topic of combat had come up between Rick and Lillian, and the latter had admitted to not being very good at hand to hand fighting. So O'Connell ended up hauling the drunken woman to her feet and guiding her into a fighting stance. She picked it up quite well, especially for someone so inebriated.
"Tough stuff, try a right hook. Ball up your fist and put it up like that," He said, moving her fists into position for her, and chuckled at how hard she was trying not to laugh. He could see it in her smile, and the way she was biting her bottom lip that she was containing giggles. "Then mean it. Hit it here."
He gestured to his palm, and Lillian nodded, with a laugh.
"I mean it!" She said, swinging her arm, and managing to hit his hand, before she toppled forwards with the momentum of her fist, and giggling as he caught her in his arms. Lillian carried on giggling as Rick helped her to sit down, sitting behind her and smiling at how care-free she seemed.
"Okay, it's time for another drink." He said.
"Unlike my brother, sir…" Lillian said, as she stole the near empty bottle from her brother's arms, and continued to speak before . "I know when to say no."
Lillian took a large gulp of the whisky, barely noticing the burn in her throat as it slid down. Rick watched her in amusement as she contradicted herself.
"And unlike your brother and sister, miss…you, I just don't get." Rick said to her, and caught her grin.
"I know," She said, replacing the bottle back into Jonathon's free arm, before she continued talking. "You're wondering, what is a place like us doing in a family like this?"
"Yeah, something like that." Rick replied, as they both shifted to face each other.
"Egypt is in our blood. You see, my father…" Lillian said, as she reached to her neck and pulled on the little gold chain that had been hanging around it this whole time. Her fingers, though slightly clumsy, managed to prise open the small locket on the end of the chain, and she held it out to him, moving even closer so she didn't have to bend forward. They were so close that their hair was brushing each other's foreheads. "…my father was a famous explorer and he loved Egypt so much, he married my mother, who was an Egyptian…and quite an adventurer herself."
Rick's eyes would flicker up from the two people immortalised in the tiny photographs in her locket to the woman herself every few seconds as she very willingly opened her life up to him. She was never usually this forthcoming. It's one of the reasons that she was still a mystery to him.
"I get your father, and I get your mother…and I get them," Rick said, letting her necklace fall back against her chest, as he pointed at her unconscious siblings. "But what are you doing here?"
"I already told you-" Lillian started, but Rick cut her off.
"Yeah, but there's more to it then just being here for your brother and sister. Why are you here?" He asked, and he was surprised when Lillian climbed, albeit a little wobbly, to her feet and glared down at him, and began to rant.
"I'm here…because I needed this. The thrill of the adventure…of the find. I needed to do something more than just explore the globe…to make myself proud of what I am." She said, not noticing how his hands had hovered sometimes and stilled her at others as she wobbled in place through her speech.
"And what is that?" He questioned, staring up at her.
"I…am…I don't actually know myself," She said, dropping to her knees with a giggle. And he smiled unsure at her as she scooted a little closer to him. "Sorry to disappoint you…Mr O'Connell, but I am just as much…of a mystery to myself as I am…to you. And now I am going to kiss you, Mr O'Connell."
"Call me Rick." He said, calmly, though his heart rate elevated slightly as her head moved closer to his and he could smell the oddly sweet smell of her skin. How had she managed to still smell nice and clean through days in the desert?
"Oh, Rick." She smiled, before she placed a soft kiss on his mouth. When she pulled away, she rested her head against his shoulder and instantly fell asleep. Rick manoeuvred her so she was laying across one of the blankets they'd been sat on, and brushed one of her dark waves off of her face, tucking it behind her ear.
'Well, she probably won't remember that tomorrow,' Rick thought, sighing as he resigned himself to taking the first watch. He'd already agreed with the other Americans that they'd take shifts just in case the desert men came back as they slept. Henderson would relieve him in a couple of hours. So he reloaded his pistols, and holstered them, before poking the fire so it wouldn't die out.