Captain Moxley and the Embers of the Empire Page 4

  Sam said nothing. They really didn’t have any time to get into it further. And, besides, up close, looking beyond the dazzle and the finery, there was something about this piece that spoke to her… and she didn’t particularly like what it was saying.

  She’d come across enough of these ancient artefacts to relish the energy they brought just by being in their presence. That feeling of history. Of distant lands and long-dead people. Sometimes of magic (those were usually the more dangerous occasions).

  Yet, right now, this amulet was also causing the pit of Sam’s stomach to churn like it did whenever things were about to get nasty. Not, she decided, because of any dark curses or hellish energies at play (which made for a pleasant change). But because she now had a sickly feeling of familiarity.

  She’d seen this piece before, she was sure of it.

  “We really need to go,” she whispered.

  Jessica blew out her cheeks. “Oh come on, Sam. You can’t just turn up here with the jitters and expect me to run off with you. Give me one good reason why I should leave?”

  Sam glanced at Will, then gestured for her sister to join her to one side.

  Jess didn’t move.

  Sam gestured harder.

  Jess slipped an arm around Will’s waist. “Whatever you need to tell me, you can tell him too. Or did you miss that this was our exhibition?”

  Sam looked from one to the other and back again, before it dawned on her there was more energy at work here than she’d realised.

  “Good grief, I’ve no time to worry about your personal attachments,” she lied, definitely feeling some worry there in the back of her mind and not a little envy. How come everyone else got to live their lives like normal people while she had to fight deadly creatures and shadowy governments? “I’m here because I was led to believe you’d been kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped? By whom, exactly?”

  “The… Nine.”

  “You think your old boyfriend stole me away?” Jess said laughing. She gestured in no uncertain terms to Sam’s appearance. “Why on earth would he do that? My clothes are all in one piece, they’re not stained with other people’s blood, and I’m not wet through. I very much doubt I’m his type!”

  Sam felt a flush creep across her cheeks, even as she clenched and unclenched her fists. The pain burning through her body told her it wasn’t all other people’s blood.

  Spotting a blue evening gown hung carefully on a hook at the back of the room, she went to fetch it and slipped behind a large Egyptian bust of Nefertiti.

  One of the white-coated assistants – a tall lady, with fashionable black glasses and a sweep of white-blonde hair brushed across her forehead – looked aghast at what was presumably her gown being taken. She opened her mouth to protest, but Will shook his head.

  “Not now, Audra,” he urged which sent her striding off into a side room, muttering what were probably some very uncomplimentary things.

  “Sorry!” Sam shouted after her, then nodded her thanks to Will as she began to change. His forehead furrowed in response. The showmanship had ceased. He knew something wasn’t right about any of this, including the fact that one of his ancient artefacts was now being used as a clothes horse.

  “Explain, please, Sam,” Jessica persisted. “Why is it that you think your old flame and his friends kidnapped me? What exactly are you involved in?”

  “Ex old flame. And unfortunately, despite Taylor’s charming facade, I have discovered there is a long list of things of which that man will do to fulfil his twisted sense of duty. As for what I’m involved in, that’s the problem. It’s not just me now. I get the impression you might play a bigger part in this than I had initially considered.”

  Sam paused to grab folds of the green velvet display drape hanging like a gaudy skirt beneath the 3,000 year old Egyptian bust, dried herself off as best she could, then slipped the blue gown over her head. It wasn’t quite perfect, a little tight at the hips, but it wasn’t wet and quite honestly that would do right now. She stepped out from the exhibit, leaving her wet clothes in a heap behind it.

  “You see, The Nine didn’t take kindly to me leaving their little government agency. I have a feeling they’ve been keeping tabs on me ever since, but until now they’ve kept their distance. Then about a month ago Taylor turned up again and tried to recruit me for one last job involving some psychic. When I told him I wasn’t interested, he suggested he might find a way to change my mind. So when I couldn’t get in touch with you…”

  Jess shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “What if he was just talking about getting you flowers or something?”

  “You honestly think I’d have done what I have tonight if I wasn’t sure?”

  “Well I don’t know what you’ve done tonight other than have a dip in what appears to be a not very clean body of water and, besides, you’re not my mother, Samantha. When will you learn that only I control my destiny? I don’t need rescuing every damn time you have a case of paranoia.”

  “You don’t know these men like I do.”

  “So?”

  Sam drew her gaze back to the amulet, twinkling beneath the lights. “So, they’re on their way right now. And we don’t want to be here when they arrive. I honestly don’t think you two realise what you’ve brought to bear by digging that thing up, but I’m beginning to have an idea.”

  Will looked concerned. His eyes flashed to Jess, but Sam already could see her sister wasn’t in the mood to give in.

  “This is our exhibition and we deserve our moment, Sam. The only people coming are the rich and famous of New York and we are ready to bathe in their awe.”

  “Bloody hell,” Sam muttered. She glanced at the clock in the corner, then dropped her voice. “If we don’t get out of here there isn’t going to be much of an exhibition left. You have no idea what these people are capable of.”

  “And you’ve never had any idea what I’m capable of,” Jess replied, crossing her arms.

  Sam sighed in defeat, then grabbed her sister’s shoulder and dragged her along towards the next room.

  “Fine, we’ll do it my way then. Thanks, Dr Sandford, that was a real gas, but we’ll be going now if you don’t mind. Quick word of advice: lock that amulet back up in the vault and call the police. You’re going to have company.”

  But they barely got two steps towards the door when a loud, piercing alarm blasted through the room.

  It was followed by gunfire and screaming.

  Sam let out a long-held cry of anguish.

  “Son of a–”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Fortune and Glory

  Will and Jess stared in horror as Sam threw her arms up and raged at the universe.

  “Goddamn shitsville on a stick! Couldn’t the people who want to kill me just once – just this once – have got held up in traffic or something? Just this once it would have been nice for the goddamn cards to fall my way. New York is always full of cars and buses and horses and people whenever I need to get anywhere! But, oh no, as soon as I need just a few minutes to do the right thing, everyone disappears off the streets and Taylor’s goons apparently get a free ride through the city. How is that fair, I ask you? How in the name of all that’s fucking holy?”

  She spun around furiously, looking for another way out.

  The doorway to the collections stood ajar, beckoning them away from the gunfire. In her experience this didn’t necessarily mean it would offer escape. It might just as easily lead to a dead end. But they had no choice. It would have to do.

  “I’m still not leaving,” Jess said, eyes flashing defiantly in the face of logic. “You’ve never given me much choice in the past, dearest sister. But I’m all grown up and I make my own decisions now, got it?”

  Sam barked a slightly hysterical laugh. “Good for you! And yet in about thirty seconds you’re going to have big bad men with guns bursting in here and demanding that amulet. What are you gonna do then, Jess? Dolly yourself up, throw your hair over your s
houlder and try to charm your way out of it? Believe me, that shit doesn’t work. Ever.”

  Will looked on the verge of a full blown panic. All mouth, no trousers, Sam thought, although he wouldn’t be the first. She’d known plenty of other showmen who got stage fright when things deteriorated. Imminent danger could do that.

  “D–demanding the amulet?” he stuttered. “But you came in here tonight thinking that Jessica was the one in danger.”

  “She still is, but it’s the amulet they’re after.”

  “Why?”

  There were more gunshots. Getting closer.

  “What are you, writing a book? You just have to trust me, Will. I have a feeling I know what that piece connects to and I’ve already seen what they’re willing to do for it. We need to split. Now!”

  Thankfully he didn’t ask for more clarification. “Captain, we went through a lot to get this piece and if it is as important as you seem to think, we simply cannot let it go. Can you help us get it out of here?”

  “Oh no, no, no!” Sam said, wagging her finger at him and laughing nervously. “I just came here for my sister. This isn’t my fight.”

  “You made it your fight the day you joined The Nine,” Jess snapped. “If they’re here, it’s surely because you played your part.”

  Sam glanced longingly towards the open collections door at the back of the room.

  “I made a mistake. On many levels, admittedly.”

  “Well, if you want me to come with you, help fix it!”

  Her sister’s stare – as fierce as their mother’s had ever been, indicating that there was responsibility to be accepted here without fuss or murmur – was unbearable.

  Sam squeezed her eyes shut, trying to figure out her options.

  She’d been in worse spots, hadn’t she? Fighting her way across occupied France, working behind enemy lines, all in a race against Hitler’s men in the search for Europe’s paranormal secrets. Every damn time it looked from the outset like the odds couldn’t be less in her favour and she still beat them.

  Except… this didn’t feel right. For the first time in years, she could conjure up no immediate way out of the mess that didn’t put everyone in danger.

  Why couldn’t she think straight?

  Because the consequences of failure no longer affect just you, she told herself. Jess is in this now. You actually care what happens next.

  And that changed everything.

  She gave them a reluctant nod. Will immediately rushed to remove the amulet from behind the glass display case, then pulled a face, aggrieved, as Sam snatched it off him and slipped it in her jacket.

  “If I’m going to do this then I’m going to do this,” she said. “The priceless artefact that might kill us all stays with me at all times. Any problem with that?”

  He shook his head quickly.

  “Super! Come on then.”

  They moved quickly through the door into the collections room.

  Sam didn’t bother to shut it behind her. She knew it offered no real protection, in the same way she had never felt the need as a child to shrink inside her blankets at night for fear of ghosts. It’s not that she didn’t believe in them (she’d witnessed far stranger phenomena since), rather that she understood when instinct wasn’t thinking straight.

  Blankets didn’t protect you from the horrors of the night. Closing doors behind you didn’t stop the enemy coming through. Accepting these things took the edge off the terror somewhat.

  “So what’s so damn important about the Isis Amulet that it is worth so much to these men of yours?” Jess asked tersely as they hurried through the collection. “I mean, Will and I know its archaeological importance is beyond measure. But what’s the value to these bozos?”

  Sam kept her eyes ahead, trying to ignore the exquisite artefacts they were passing. Rows of painted stone sarcophagi and stelae. An amber-coloured sword and silver helmet. A five thousand year-old wooden ship with a prow carved in the shape of a mermaid. This exhibition was shaping up to be quite something.

  “Their trouble is mainly one of obsession,” she replied, spotting a single door in the back marked “Staff Only” and shifting direction towards it. “The Nine believe in what they call ‘the greater good’, no matter what the cost.”

  “And what’s the greater good this time? Mysterious lights in the sky? Creatures from the deep?”

  “Creatures?” Will asked, panicking.

  Jess waved a dismissive hand. “You don’t know the half of what she’s told me about her job.”

  “And that’s the way it’ll stay, for your own sanity,” Sam insisted. “However, in this case, it’s something you’ll both be interested in. Because, if I’m right, the amulet concerns a mythical lost repository of knowledge so extensive it would make the great Library of Alexandria look like a bookshelf.”

  “You’re talking about the Hall of Records?”

  Sam glanced at Will, impressed.

  “I thought academics like you were told to stay away from the fringe elements of history?”

  Will shrugged uncomfortably. “Jessica has, er, clued me in quite substantially on such things as they’ve cropped up in her studies. It appears the field of archaeology is getting a little more hip these days. There are some interesting theories.”

  “A good friend once told me archaeology is about fact,” Sam said, pausing briefly at a carving on a tall, stone stele of three bearded figures looking to the sky. She traced her fingers up their line of sight to a mysterious oblong object above them. “Science, Dr Sandford. Not science fiction.”

  “And yet, as Jess keeps telling me,” he replied, “even science needs to be flexible. We don’t know everything about our world yet, after all.”

  Sam nodded at that. If only he knew how right he was.

  More gunfire erupted in the background. The rat-a-tat firecrackers increasing in volume. Jess quickly led them through the staff door and locked it behind her.

  They were now in a large conservation room. Ancient chaos lay before them. Desks piled high with all kinds of artefacts. Sarcophagi stood upright, awaiting their turn to have the dust of history brushed from their inscriptions. A thick black tomb – obsidian, perhaps – twice the size of the others, lay to one side, its lid leaning against it.

  But it was the open window at the back that drew her attention.

  “What could possibly be in the Hall that these men would want?” Will mused, as she herded them towards their escape route. “They seem like the type who want weapons. Yet this would be a library. A repository of history.”

  “Knowledge is power, Will. You of all people should know that. There’s no telling what secrets lie buried in that place. And what these men would do with them.”

  “Well,” Jess began, and Sam’s heart sank immediately, she knew what was coming, “if it’s that important, maybe our work here lies beyond simply rescuing the amulet from their clutches? What if we use it to find the Hall ourselves? That way we can open it up to the world before these men have a chance to steal it for themselves!”

  Sam slowed at her sister’s words and the look of determination she saw creeping into her expression. Even Will’s face had gained a little more colour and enthusiasm.

  The window behind her suddenly seemed that much further away.

  “What you’re suggesting is a very bad idea,” she warned. “And I don’t think now is the time–”

  She stopped and jerked her head around, hearing raised voices and heavy footsteps on the other side of the door.

  Shit.

  Clasping Jess’s shoulders, she shoved her sister into an upstanding Egyptian coffin and kicked the lid closed. It wasn’t ideal, but she could trust her sister to stay quiet and not to panic. But Will?

  She pulled him over the edge of the obsidian tomb next to them, clamping her hand over his mouth, as the lock on the door to the room was shot out and agents stormed in.

  Unfortunately, she heard someone being dragged with them. Whether it was
a guest or an assistant, there was definite sobbing beneath the crescendo of footsteps.

  “Window!” someone barked.

  Footsteps passed the tomb. Will stopped struggling and stared fearfully at Sam beneath the thick curtain of her damp, chestnut hair falling onto his face. She lifted her hand away from his mouth and put a finger to her lips. He blinked and nodded.

  “Go, find them,” said another voice, right next to the tomb. One she recognised.

  The odds of them making it out of here alive suddenly dropped.

  “They’ve left the building,” Agent Smith said on his walkie talkie. He still had that slight German accent they’d tried to bury beneath layers of vocal training – because it wouldn’t do for the American Government to been seen working with the goons of the Third Reich, would it? “East wing. Pick up the amulet and kill whoever has it.”

  There was a muffled response.

  “Yes, especially her.”

  The sobbing inside the room intensified. The images of what might be happening outside the tomb flashed through Sam’s mind. Her heartbeat raced, so loud she half expected Smith to be able to hear it.

  It was one of the assistants crying. A man.

  “Sir, what about this one?”

  The immediate gunshot made both Sam and Will jump. She felt his fingers dig into her thighs hard, saw the tears pooling in the whites of his eyes. She clamped her hand back over his mouth and shook her head, even though she too felt like screaming out.

  That was a fast kill, even for Smith.

  Goddamnit, she thought, her head spinning. God-fucking-dammit, you Nazi bastard.

  Yet as quickly as the fear overwhelmed her, she wrestled back control. Tried to reshape it, like a potter with clay on a wheel. Trying to reveal the far more useful feeling hidden within. Something far stronger, responsible for her survival when times were at their worst.