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“Grabbing would be the word. I don’t think she’s going to come quietly,” Jack remarked, though I noticed the touch of a smile at the corners of his mouth.
“I take it she’s not keen on returning home?” I asked.
“You could say that again. She thinks of us more as jailers than security.” Jack’s smile faded.
Wesley looked from West to Jack. “Why does she need security? Other than the obvious.”
“She was born as the daughter of an English earl, and there have already been several kidnapping attempts, most of which she doesn’t remember or we were able to prevent before she became aware of them. We still aren’t sure whether they are connected to her current life or past ones, but she will definitely be kidnapped tonight by us.” He looked over at Jack with a grim expression. “If she’s going to treat us like prison guards, then she leaves us no choice than to actually act that way.”
Jack nodded, looking resigned. “Do you know which tent is hers?” he asked Wesley.
He nodded. “Yes, it’s that one over there, but she’s sharing with another volunteer. Maybe I could go and get her, tell her to come out.” He sighed. “She trusts me and won’t expect anything.”
West nodded. “Good idea. We’ll get her out of here and take her home. Wesley, if you can stick around and make excuses, a family emergency perhaps, and send her stuff on afterwards?”
“Sure.” Wesley stood up and moved over to the tent. West and Jack followed behind, taking up positions on either side of the tent but out of sight. I stood at the back of the tent in case she sensed something and made a run for it. I was getting the sense she was a bit of a handful, and I grinned in the darkness at the prospect of the fun that could lead to. It had been a long time since I hunted her through the darkness.
“Tory? Tory?” I heard Wesley’s voice, low and hesitant, and then a female voice, slurred with sleep.
“What? Did she go to the toilets?”
Another murmur, and I moved round behind West.
His face was like thunder, and the second the woman had disappeared back in the tent, he grabbed my arm and pulled me out of earshot. “She’s not here. Check the toilets and the showers.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I ran silently through the tents, peering through the windows of the storage containers, but they only seemed to hold offices and storage. I moved around the buildings until I reached the temporary facilities behind the storage containers. I pulled out a pistol, just in case, and checked each stall and cubicle. All stood empty. I darted back outside and scanned the surrounding shadows in case she had come out and got disoriented in the darkness, but there was nothing. I stood quietly, closed my eyes, and listened. Even as a human, I had been lucky enough to have been born with exceptional eyesight and hearing. I could make out the footsteps and murmurs of the other men, snores coming from a tent nearby, and in the distance, a soft shh sound, like sand being poured from a cup.
I spun around and raced back to the front. I could see the others fanning out through the tents and picked out West’s hulking form off to my left. I sprinted towards him, and as soon as he caught the movement, I mouthed, “Hatay!” His eyes widened, and then the impassive mask I knew so well fell down into place, and he was our commander once more.
He turned and waved at Jack, motioning at him to return to the cooking area. It took a few seconds at most for us to reach the tables. Even Wesley had run, I could hear him gasping as he came up behind Jack.
“What is it?” Jack whispered.
“Hatay! I can hear them out that way towards the temple.”
“Moving towards us or away?” West asked, pulling out his pistols and checking them. Jack did the same.
“Away from the camp and towards the temple. There are a lot of them. Something is attracting them.” I pulled my own pistols out.
Jack looked up at West. “Tory!”
West nodded. “Let’s go.”
I tapped Wesley on the shoulder and passed him a pistol. “Remember how to use one of these?”
Wesley took it gingerly and nodded. “Yes, more or less.”
“Good, let’s go.”
We spread out but kept within each other’s line of sight, heading across the huge site towards the temple. The going was tricky with the boulders that lay everywhere, some partially buried and liable to trip you if you weren’t careful. I noticed Wesley to my left nearly go down twice, though he did manage to keep his footing. He had nipped back to his tent and dug out his shoes, but he’d been rushing, and if the situation wasn’t so precarious, I would have laughed at the sight of him stumbling about in the dark in glasses, a white shirt, blue boxers, and polished brown loafers.
The rest of us moved quickly through the stones, keeping our senses trained for any movement or sound nearby.
“Ssst!” West caught my attention and motioned ahead. I stepped up onto a large boulder and saw what he had spotted.
Up ahead was the temple. At one time the entrance would have been marked by two huge towers called pylons, but they had long since crumbled. The stones lay about the place, their sandy colour highlighted from above from the moon and stars, but what West had noticed was the golden light spilling between the stones, light that seemed to come from inside the temple itself.
“She’s found the entrance!” I called quietly.
“Now what?” Wesley asked, moving closer.
“We’re too late,” Jack said, jogging over.
West stared up ahead. “I can see hatay, lots of them. We’re going to have to fight our way through. Wesley, stay close to Zayn. We’ll head through in teams of two. Remember, aim for the heart or they’ll keep coming.”
“We’ll wake the camp,” Wesley warned, looking pale. I didn’t blame him. He never had the stomach for killing, even hatay.
I glanced behind us. “Then we’ll wake the camp, and if we aren’t worried about waking them then...” I swung my bag off my shoulder and opened it. Stashing my pistol in my harness, I pulled out my khopesh and attached it to my belt, then I pulled out my Uzi and clipped in the magazine. “We need to move now, more are coming.”
West nodded and held up his pistols. “Well then, let’s go get our girl.”
