Gabriel Hunt - Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire

“Christ, Gabriel,” Fiona said as he got up and ran to her. “You couldn’t have cut it any closer, could you? I thought for sure…”

Gabriel snatched up one of the blades the knife thrower had dropped when he’d fallen. He used it to slice through the bonds at her wrists.

“From now on,” Gabriel said, slashing the ropes at her waist and ankles, “you don’t get to be snide about my charmingly anachronistic sense of right and wrong. It’s the only reason you’re alive right now.”

Freed from her bondage, Fiona collapsed into Gabriel’s arms.

“I’m so sorry, Gabriel,” she said, pressing her body against him, her lips inches from his. “Can you forgive me?”

Gabriel took her by the shoulders and pushed her back and away, his expression stern.

“I’ll forgive you once the kindjal has been safely delivered to the Royal Museum,” he said.

She wrapped her bruised arms protectively around her body. They both looked up suddenly as a loud, rhythmic pounding commenced overhead. Clearly the soldiers were trying a new technique to break down the barred door at the top of the stairs. That door had been holding back angry soldiers for over five hundred years, Gabriel thought; it would probably last at least a few more minutes. But what would they do when it fell?

“Gabriel,” a hoarse voice said.

It was Djordji. Gabriel knelt beside him. The Gypsy gripped Gabriel’s shirt with a bloody hand.

“You must escape,” Djordji said, his voice weak. “There is secret tunnel. On right, trap door. It take you out to other side of hill. Go.”

“We’ll all go,” Gabriel said. “Come on, Djo, get up.”

“I cannot,” Djordji said. “You go now.”

The banging on the door above grew louder. Fiona grabbed at Gabriel’s arm.

“He’s right,” she said, her eyes dark and serious. “We have to go now.”

He turned back to Djordji. “Your wife would put some kind of curse on me if I left you here to die.” He grabbed the Gypsy’s good arm and hauled him up across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Djordji made a stifled airless sound of pain but did not protest.

“Now where’s this tunnel,” Gabriel said. “And Fiona—don’t even think of trying to give me the slip again.”

“No offense, Gabriel,” she said as she grabbed a torch off the wall, “but right now you’re not the one I’m most worried about.”

“Where’s this trap door, Djordji?” Gabriel said, looking around desperately.

“You’re standing on it,” Djordji whispered, and looking down Gabriel could just barely make out a rectangular outline in the dirt-covered stone and a well-concealed pull-ring at its center. If he hadn’t been told about it, he could’ve searched for hours and never noticed it.

They drew the trap door shut behind them just as the soldiers finally broke through above and started barreling down the stairs.

Inside, the tunnel was dark, damp and claustrophobic. The guttering torch provided the only light. Gabriel had to walk in a crouch to prevent Djordji from banging repeatedly into the low ceiling as he lay, stoic and bleeding, across Gabriel’s shoulders. They passed broken bottles and small moldering piles of skin magazines; the flickering orange torchlight revealed a vast quantity of crude graffiti on the stone walls. There was a smell of urine and stale beer. The tunnel twisted and turned, seeming to go on forever.

“How did you know about this tunnel?” Gabriel asked, keeping his voice low.

Djordji answered in a whisper. “I played here as a boy. With other Roma—we hide from police, or just come at night to share a bottle, smoke cigarettes.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you smoking is hazardous to your health?” Gabriel said, and he felt Djordji’s injured body wracked with silent laughter.

It was the better part of an hour before the air freshened and a faint gleam of moonlight became visible at the far end of the tunnel. A sudden gust of night wind killed the sputtering torch in Fiona’s hand, leaving them in near total blackness. Gabriel instinctively reached out in the dark to grab Fiona’s hand, to prevent her from making a run for it. He wound up with a soft handful of an entirely different body part.

“Why, Gabriel,” Fiona said. “I was sure you’d lost all interest by now.”

Gabriel shifted his grip to her upper arm.

“Come on,” he said, as he led her toward the crooked metal doors at the far end of the tunnel.

When they reached the doors, Gabriel found them chained closed, but luckily the lock had been smashed by the latest generation of Roma teenagers. At his direction, Fiona unwrapped the chain and shoved the doors open. Gabriel gently let Djordji down off his shoulders to rest against a pile of large smooth stones. The Gypsy sighed heavily. He seemed to be doing better now that the initial shock had passed, but he was still pale and wincing with pain.

“So,” Gabriel said, to Fiona. “Where is it?”

She pushed her tangled hair back off her forehead and winked, then began to unzip her dress.

“For crying out loud, what are you doing…”

She shucked off the dress. It pooled at her feet. Beneath it, between a filmy, transparent bra and tiny silk pan ties, she wore an ornate corset with gold stitching. She unfastened a compartment in the side of the thickly boned corset. To Gabriel’s astonishment, the golden kindjal slid out of the lining. She held it up in the moonlight.

“You had it on you the whole time?” Gabriel said.

“Unlike you, Gabriel, I don’t trust other people,” she said. “Or hiding places I can’t feel against my skin.” She handed him the dagger after a moment’s hesitation. Then she favored him with a slow, sultry smile. “No hard feelings, then?”

Gabriel had plenty of hard feelings at that moment, looking at her standing there with the moonlight on her pale skin, shivering slightly in the cool night breeze. He was having a tough time remembering how she’d betrayed and tried to kill him. Lucky for him, Djordji picked that moment to speak up.

“I would like hospital now, please,” he said.

“Well,” Fiona said, picking up her dress and wriggling back into it, “that’s that, then. You should be happy, Gabriel. I know how badly you hate to lose.”

She gestured for Gabriel to zip her up. When he had, she turned to face him, looking up into his eyes.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” she said. “Next time I may just end up on top.” She was close enough to kiss him, but didn’t. She just spun on her heel and strode away.

Gabriel reached out a hand to help Djordji up. “Think you can walk?” Gabriel said.

With a groan, Djordji heaved himself to his feet. Gabriel steadied him. “I think so.”

Gabriel watched Fiona walk away across the moonlit steppe. He knew he ought to go after her, bring her in to the police of any of the three countries he’d chased her through—she’d broken no shortage of laws. But Djordji’s injury was more pressing, and even if it hadn’t been…somehow Gabriel just didn’t think he could have brought himself to do it. He looked down at the kindjal , which Djordji was staring at like he couldn’t quite believe it was real, then back up at Fiona’s retreating figure. Why had she done it, he wondered. Any of it—seducing him, betraying him, handing over the kindjal in the end. One thing he knew: No matter how far he traveled, or how much he learned, or how many extraordinary things he witnessed, he’d never be able to understand women.

Chapter 5

Gabriel was tired, cranky and stiff by the time he arrived at the Sutton Place brownstone that housed the offices of the Hunt Foundation. His younger brother Michael had left him an urgent message to come over as soon as his plane touched down at JFK, so he’d sent his minimal baggage on to his rooms on the top floor of the Discoverers League building and told the driver to bring him directly here. When Stefan pulled the long black town car away, Gabriel stood for a moment on the steps before going inside. As was frequently the case after a particularly arduous mission, he felt a strange kind of melancholy settle in upon his return to the city of his birth. There was part of him that was glad to be home—but another part was already itching to head off again.