“There they are!” Skeeter yelled. “Molly, quick! Go call Security!”
Eight-year-old Tevel, playing his role with enthusiasm, taunted, “Boy, are you gonna get yours! They’ll throw away the key! Drop you down an unstable gate! Nyah-nyah, you’re all going to jail! Come on, Molly, let’s tell on ‘em!”
Hashim, not to be outdone, was shouting something that sounded scurrilous. Whether it was the teenager’s Arabic taunts or Tevel’s threats or Skeeter’s shout for Molly to call Security, six of the burliest, nastiest, angriest members of the construction crew charged right at them. Screwdrivers and wicked knives glinted in the work lights dangling from the unfinished ceiling. The man in the lead was shouting, “Don’t let them get away! Kill them all!”
Skeeter whipped around, bolting back the way they’d come. “Run!”
Hashim was still yelling taunts in Arabic as they pounded through a series of twists and turns in the corridor. Molly passed Skeeter, as planned, while eight-year-old Tevel shot into the lead, on a mission of his own. When they plunged through the blind corner, Skeeter turned on his heel and waited, claw hammer clutched in one hand. He could hear the pounding of their feet, could smell the stench of their sweat—
All six of them piled into the blind corner, running full tilt.
“NOW!”
Kynan Rhys Gower lunged through an open doorway, war hammer gripped over his head for a striking blow. The heavy wooden mallet whistled in a short arc. The lead man ran full tilt into it. His skull caved in with a sickening crunch. The man behind him screamed and tripped over the body, trying to dig a heavy Egyptian hunting dart out of his left kidney. A rock whizzed from the doorway nearest Skeeter. It stuck the throat of the man next to the pincushion. The man gave out a gurgling scream and went down, clutching his crushed trachea. Eigil Bjarneson’s screaming war cry sent one man racing in retreat—straight onto Alfonzo’s pike. Another man screamed and fell to his knees when Eigil severed his hand with a single blow of his sword. A sharpened screwdriver clattered to the floor from the twitching, disconnected fingers. The final man was hit with double blows in the chest, once from a spinning rock, once when a heavy hunting dart embedded itself between ribs.