up.
Chapter 5
The event elicited a scream from Rahal that could be heard out in the gardens.
Before it even started, Key was charging for the appartement du roi doorway, while Lancaster was stabbing buttons to establish ear-comm contact with the others.
“The clinic, now, with whatever restraints you can find!”
The screams continued, changing from surprise to terror, as Key raced down the Hall of Mirrors, passing even Nichols as she came in from the south, and then Gonzales coming in from the east. They didn’t call him Speedy for nothing.
Daniels and Safar soon joined the race, the straps the Arab was holding and the spear Daniels was carrying slowing them down.
“What, what?” the big man called from the back of the pack.
Key was too intent on speed to answer, but not Lancaster, who came running up from behind Daniels.
“You know that dead child?” he grunted between huffs.
“What about her?”
“She’s not dead anymore,” he gasped.
The information hit Daniels like a water balloon, straightening his posture and doubling his speed.
Nichols was just a few steps ahead of Key as they reached the examination room, and what the redhead saw caused her to slide across the floor, waving her arms to maintain balance.
Key grabbed the side of the door to make sure he wouldn’t make things worse—giving him just enough time to register the image of Rahal whirling around the room, waving her arms as if she were being attacked by wasps, while the angelic, naked child was tearing at her hair and face with her little claws.
“Fuckaduck!” Daniels bellowed as he all but inadvertently launched Gonzales into the room. The mechanic used the momentum to try grabbing at the child’s tiny waist to pull her off Rahal, but as soon as his fingers touched the flesh, the child launched itself onto him instead.
“Hijo de puta!” he all but screamed as the tiny fingernails clawed at his eyes. He staggered back, clutching at the thing scrabbling around his shoulders—scraping down his neck and chest with her curled toes.
Rahal had dropped to the floor, clearly in shock, but she was still not so far gone that she couldn’t turn to look at the others in astonishment. A part of her mind had wanted Key to catch her, or at least comfort her, but he was too busy yanking the others inside.
“Close the door, close the door,” he seethed. “Don’t let the thing out!”
Lancaster, who didn’t think of protecting himself for a second, yanked the door closed behind him. “Fan out,” he barked. “Surround it. Surround him!”
Nichols was on the other side of the area before Lancaster had even stopped speaking. Safar looked helplessly at the straps in his hands, but he didn’t drop them. Key scoured the room for anything that could effectively help, as Daniels jumped forward, dropped the spear, and clamped onto the child atop the lurching Gonzales with both meaty paws.
But in the moment between the time his hands slapped and his fingers constricted, the child let out an unearthly yowl, squirmed and spun at the same moment, then whirled away from them—smacking into the floor and sliding under a Multix Digital Radiology Imager. They all heard her hit the wall with a solid thud.
Daniels yanked the disoriented Gonzales behind him protectively. Nichols skidded backward, bending down to see if she could spot the child. Lancaster stood tall, with his back to the door, his phone to his ear, his thumb ready to dial. Safar looked from the machine to Key and back again. Key stood in the center of the room, equidistant from the door to the machine, his back bent, his hands out in an “everyone chill” position.
The only sound in the room was Rahal’s repeated gasping breaths.
Then Key pointed at Safar, and when Safar nodded, Key pointed at the scrubs bin—the laundry receptacle Rahal used to put her dirty clothes in—then held up a forefinger in a “wait” position.
“Maybe she’s unconscious,” Rahal started to whisper, but stopped when Key made a sharp “quiet” motion.
He then tapped Daniels on the back. When Daniels looked at him, he made a slow “follow my lead” motion as he started edging toward the digital imaging machine. A moment later, Daniels moved unerringly behind Key, like a baseball umpire behind a catcher, while Safar started edging along the far wall toward the scrubs bin.
Lancaster saw what Key was planning, and didn’t like it. But because he could think of no better alternative, he stayed silent.
Key, Daniels, and Safar took another step—Nichols watching their progress carefully, ready for anything.
“She’s just frightened,” Rahal started to suggest, but then hushed when Gonzales urgently gripped her shoulder as he kneeled painfully behind her.
Key paused, so the others did as well. They held their breaths as he breathed deeply, then quickly dropped to his stomach and shoved his right arm under the machine.
For a second, nothing happened, then Key’s face tightened as he swept his arm back and forth under the machine as if he were trying to scrub the floor clean. Then they all heard an enraged, trapped hyena squeal, and saw Key convulse on the floor before he yanked his arm back.
The child was the barracuda, Key’s hand was the worm. Key hurled the child back with such force that it flew off his fingers, leaving a spurt of flying blood, directly into Daniels’s arms. But the big man didn’t try to run with it. Instead he immediately hurled it back the way it had come—only this time directly at the maw of the laundry bin that Safar was holding up toward him like an expert lacrosse player.
By then Key was there, grabbing the top of the bag, twisting it closed, and knotting it.
“Hold it, hold it!” he barked at Safar as the bag started twirling and scrambling around the floor.
“It’s not holding!” Nichols yelled. “She’s tearing through it like rice paper!”
It was true. The child was hardly in the trap before her little fingers started shredding the cloth like razors.
But then Nichols was there again, shoving the straps Safar had dropped back into his hands. Safar started frantically wrapping the tearing bag with the leather bands. But as fast as he could buckle them, the child was starting to rip them with both her hands and her teeth.
By then Rahal was scrambling through the closest medicine cabinet, her trembling fingers trying to prepare a sedative injection. “Hold her,” she cried. “Just a few seconds more—!”
Key slapped Daniels toward the child’s feet as he dropped to his knees by her head. Both grabbed at the thrashing child’s ankles and wrists, but they were just too small, slippery, and surprisingly strong. The thing was snarling like an animal that was not even close to being trapped, and Key could see why. Despite their size, age, intelligence, experience, and all their efforts, they were losing. It was only a matter of seconds before the child would be free again.
Like a slippery eel, it was just about to clear their
