Gabriel Hunt - Hunt at World's End

“I think I can,” Joyce said. “I’m just not sure about Daniel.”

“I’ll try,” Daniel said.

They spun and ran for the door. Gabriel heard the twang of bowstrings, arrows cutting the air toward them. Gabriel pushed himself hard. They were almost there. Another bowstring twanged.

“Gabriel, look out!” Daniel yelled. He rammed into Gabriel from behind, knocking him to one side. The arrow that had been headed squarely at Gabriel’s back stabbed into Daniel’s shoulder instead. His face instantly went pale. “I’m hit,” he said softly and fell to the deck.

Joyce, almost at the door, skidded to a halt. She ran back.

Gabriel looked around for some way to draw the cult members’ attention away from them. His gaze fell on the bodies of the security guards slumped by the wall. Their guns lay on the floor beside them. Gabriel ran for them. As he’d hoped, the bowmen turned to follow him, taking their aim off Joyce and Daniel. Arrows pursued him across the deck. One slashed his back, slicing his shirt and drawing a hot line of pain across his shoulder blades, but he kept moving. He dropped to the deck and slid across it like he was sliding into home plate. As he fetched up against the dead guards’ bodies, he grabbed one of their guns in each hand. Turning back, he squeezed the triggers repeatedly, blasting bullet after bullet at the cultists. White robes burst into red, skull masks cracked and shattered, bows dropped from their hands. When the smoke cleared, only the high priest was left standing—and he broke and made a run for it.

Gabriel fired at him but the man was already too far and the shot went wide. Gabriel considered giving chase—but Daniel needed help. He ran over to Joyce instead.

“Don’t worry about us,” she shouted. “Get that bastard!”

At the far end of the deck, Gabriel saw the high priest spiraling down a metal staircase between decks. Gabriel grabbed the railing at the edge of the top deck and jumped over it, dropping twenty feet to the deck below. He landed on his feet, rolled off the impact, then sprang up and sprinted for the stairwell. The high priest was already on the next level down. Gabriel chased him down two more flights before the high priest burst through the door to the main deck. Gabriel followed a moment later, only to find the deck empty. He looked both ways, saw the door to the ballroom swinging shut, and ran for it. He grabbed it just before it closed and slipped inside.

The enormous room was dark except for flickering pinpoints of light thrown along the walls by the mirrored ball rotating on the ceiling. The stage, the dance floor and the small tables surrounding it were all empty. Everyone must have been sent back to their rooms after word spread of the attack. He looked around, but there was no sign of the high priest. Gabriel stepped deeper into the ballroom, chilled equally by the strong air-conditioning and the utter silence. The high priest could be anywhere. He could be directly behind Gabriel, getting ready to launch an attack…

Movement caught his eye, the flutter of a dark curtain draped over the wall. Gabriel ran toward it, threw back the curtain. No one was there, only an emergency exit. He hit the panic bar and shoved the door open. Beyond it was a long hallway that extended to either side. He ran down both directions to the end before finally admitting to himself that he’d lost the man. The high priest was probably off the ship by now.

He returned to the stairwell and encountered Joyce helping Daniel down the stairs.

“What happened?” Joyce asked.

Gabriel shook his head. “He got away.” Daniel was still pale and had a gloss of sweat on his forehead, but the arrow was gone from his shoulder, replaced with a wide circle of blood on his shirt. “How’s he doing?”

“I’m okay,” Daniel said, though his unsteady voice suggested otherwise. “The arrow didn’t go in very deep…Joyce was able to pull it out.”

“Arrows like this hurt like hell coming out,” Gabriel said. “I know from experience.”

“Yes, hell’s a fair approximation,” Daniel said, wincing, “of what it feels like to have a…a sharp piece of metal torn out of your flesh.”

Gabriel took the bulk of Daniel’s weight off Joyce’s shoulder and helped him down the rest of the stairs and out into the hallway that led to their cabins. “It was a foolish thing to do, jumping in front of an arrow like that.”

“Trust me, I have no intention of ever doing it again,” Daniel said.

“But it probably did save my life,” Gabriel said. “I owe you one.”

“How about you pay me back by declaring house arrest over?” Daniel said.

Gabriel exchanged a glance with Joyce.

“Done,” Gabriel said. “But let’s make one more stop in your cabin. There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom. I know a thing or two about treating arrow wounds.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Daniel shook his head. “I can’t believe I actually got shot with an arrow. By a millennia-old death cult!”

“That’ll pack them in at your next lecture,” Joyce said.

Daniel looked up at Gabriel. “Is it always like this for you?”

“No,” he said. “Sometimes the death cults are only centuries-old.”

They turned the corner and Gabriel froze as they saw the cabin doors. The door to Daniel’s cabin was shut tight, but the door to his and Joyce’s was slightly ajar, its edge chipped and bent near the lock. He handed Daniel back off to Joyce and whispered, “Stay here.”

He pushed the door open slowly, switched on the light. The room had been tossed: the closet door was open, the drawers pulled out of the dresser, the sheets stripped from the bed. He saw Joyce’s backpack lying open on the floor. He picked it up and looked inside.

“Damn it!”

“What’s wrong?” Joyce asked, from the doorway.

“They’re gone,” Gabriel said, waving the empty backpack at her. “The Star, the map, the Eye, all of it.” He’d been a fool. The attack had been a diversion. The cult’s true objectives had been sitting unguarded in his cabin all along.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Daniel said. “That’s not good at all.”

Vassily watched as Arkady undid the ropes mooring their boat to the African Princess. The young man had done well, locating the interlopers’ room and then stealing the sacred relics. But the two of them were the only ones who remained out of an attack force of more than a dozen. And if Arkady had been with them on deck, he would surely be as dead as the others. The interlopers, this Gabriel Hunt and the other two ( Who was that fat old man? Vassily wondered), had fought more bravely—and more effectively—than Vassily had anticipated. He’d expected to return not only with the Star and one of the Eyes of Teshub, but also with their heads for proud display and subsequent flensing and use in worship. That they were still alive vexed him. Ulikummis would not be happy with him for letting them live.

Arkady started the engine, moving the ketch forward along the length of the cruise ship.

“When we reach shore, you must contact the African sect, Arkady,” Vassily ordered. “Tell them we need more warriors.”

“Yes, High Priest. How many will you require?”

“All of them,” Vassily said.

Chapter 22

The jeep’s tires kicked up clouds of dust as it rattled and bumped over the uneven terrain of the desert. To make better time, Gabriel avoided the salt flats and the more verdant areas of the Kalahari, not wanting to be slowed down by traffic, safari tours or any of the native San villages. Massive, spiderlike baobab trees rose up every few hundred yards like sentinels amid the ocean of sand. The dry brush that poked out of the dunes scratched at the underside of the jeep as they raced over it while dust-colored meerkats poked their heads curiously out of their burrows to watch them pass. In the seat next to him, Joyce was buckled in, but only loosely so she could twist around to face Daniel in back. They were reviewing the only information they had left: the notes and coordinates he’d written down back in Veda’s house when they’d identified the location of the third Eye. As the jeep bounded over a low dune, the equipment in the back clattered.