Slay

by Kim Curran

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Diaz said, with a soft sigh.

  “It really is,” Milly replied, raising her hand to rest on the glass case of the display cabinet.

  “Don’t touch!” the man in black barked.

  Milly lifted her hand slowly and backed away. If they couldn’t so much as touch the glass, how were they going to get that thing out of here? JD wondered.

  “So,” Diaz said, turning away so the security guard couldn’t hear her, “what’s the plan?”

  Milly looked at JD and smiled. “Just follow my lead.”

  “That doesn’t look right, does it, professor?” Milly said loudly.

  Diaz looked at her, her nose wrinkled above the bridge of her glasses.

  “That symbol,” Milly continued, hoping that Diaz would catch on. “Isn’t that Mayan?”

  Diaz looked back at the blade and then comprehension dawned. “Oh, yes, why yes, I think you’re right. Yes, that’s absolutely not Aztec script. Which can only mean one thing…”

  “Diaz,” a weary voice said from behind them. “I don’t remember inviting you.”

  Milly turned with Diaz to see a red-faced man in a crumpled suit and bow tie. He held a nearly empty glass of red wine in stubby fingers and his pained smile revealed wine-stained teeth.

  “Charles,” Diaz said with clear distaste. “I don’t remember inviting you to Mexico where you contaminated my dig with your massive shoes and tiny hands and stole MY find!”

  “Still bitter I see. Shame, you really should learn to get over things. Can I help it if the Field Museum has richer and better connected patrons than the university? If you are looking for a new position, maybe I can introduce you to my patron? He’s coming tonight. I could always do with some more good researchers on my staff.”

  “I’m not going anywhere near your staff,” Diaz said.

  The man called Charles chuckled and threw back the last dregs of his wine.

  “So how are you going to explain to your patron that that knife is a fake?” Milly said. She liked this man as much as Diaz seemed to.

  “A what?” Charles said.

  “A fake, Charles,” Diaz said. “Do you need your ears testing along with your brain? The carving on the handle isn’t Aztec. In fact, I would go as far as to say that what you might be looking at here is a modern replica, tat made to sell to foolish tourists.”

  “But…but…” Charles spluttered, patches of red appearing on his vein-mottled cheeks. “You were the one who found it.”

  “And if you remember, I had yet to authenticate it before you and your team stormed in.”

  “Diaz, I swear, if you have set me up—”

  Diaz chuckled, delighted. “Listen, let me offer you a deal – which is more than you offered me. Give me fifteen minutes to examine the blade and if it’s fake, as I believe it is, I will say nothing. We’ll simply pretend it was never here and no one, not your patron or any of these lovely guests will ever know. But if it’s genuine, I want shared credit on the find.”

  “Hmmm,” Charles said, his beady eyes narrowing. “I don’t trust you as far as I could throw a tepoztopilli.”

  “Oh, Charles, Charles! The Aztec didn’t throw their tepoztopilli, they were used for hand-to-hand combat, I would have thought you’d know that. But I swear to you, on my name as an archaeologist, I will be one hundred per cent honest with you. You know that much about me.”

  Charles seemed to consider this. He checked his watch, then glanced at the large doors. “Okay. You have your fifteen minutes and then I want the blade back in its case. She can come. He stays.” Then he waved at the security guard. “Unlock it.”

  Milly looked desperately at JD. She couldn’t handle this on her own. But he shook his head the smallest of fractions.

  “Okay, I’ll wait here, like a good little boy,” he said, and Milly knew he had absolutely no intention of staying put. She smiled.

  The guard looked confused, his already pug-like face crumpling in on itself with the effort of thought.

  “Well? I said unlock it,” Charles repeated. “We need to take the blade to be examined.”

  The security guard unlocked the case while Charles pulled a pair of white gloves out of his back pocket and put them on. Milly watched hungrily as he lifted the blade out of its case.

  He carried the blade through the crowd, holding it in front of him as if it was a grenade that might go off any minute. Which in some ways, Milly thought, it was.

  “Where are we going?” Milly whispered to Diaz.

  “The basement, I’m guessing. He’ll want to keep this as contained as possible. Which probably won’t make things easy for your friends who are following us.” She nodded over her shoulder at Tom, Connor and the twins, who were following at a distance. JD too had slipped away from the guard and was sticking close to them. Diaz had keen eyes. You’d have to look carefully to spot that the boys were on their tail. At first glance, they were five famous boys, surprisingly interested in the exhibits, but there was a certain sense of purpose in their meanderings. They weren’t going to let the blade, or Milly, out of their sight.

  They followed Charles and the blade through the main hall, weaving through laughing guests and waiters, passing glass cabinets filled with taxidermy seabirds posed mid-flight or perched in trees and, in one case, about to eat a frog. Milly shivered as the glass eyes of the birds seemed to follow her, ready to snap her up in their pincer beaks just like that rubbery frog. Even when they’d left the natural world exhibits behind, she still felt like she was being watched.

  They arrived at an elevator marked Restricted, with a keycard lock under the call button.

  “In my inside pocket,” Charles said.

  Diaz sighed and reached inside the man’s jacket, her face turned away in disgust. She pulled a card pass out with two fingers and pressed it against a panel on the wall. The doors pinged and slid open. Milly followed Diaz and Charles inside. She saw JD and the others only a matter of metres away. But without the key card, how were they going to follow? Milly’s mind raced and her hand started to itch in panic. She needed a plan and fast – the elevator doors were already closing.

  Diaz was one step ahead of her. When the doors were only a centimetre or so apart, Diaz bent down to adjust her shoe and Milly saw her flick the card out through the gap. Milly gazed at Diaz in dumb adoration. She was the kind of smart Milly always wanted to be. Diaz winked at her as the lift began to move.

  There was plenty of room for the three of them and yet Milly still felt a creeping claustrophobia as the lift rumbled downward. Charles muttered under his breath, something about patrons and reputation. Diaz hummed to herself; she seemed to be enjoying all of this. The lift juddered to a halt and they stepped out into darkness.

  “Don’t move. You will only break something.”

  Charles vanished into the blackness; only the sound of his shoes could be heard. A moment later, there was a loud clunk of a switch and strip lights blinked on. They were standing in a huge warehouse, filled with crates and exhibits under repair or out of date. It seemed to stretch on and on and on.

  “Come. Do not touch anything.”

  Milly had no intention of touching anything. The stuffed animals and mannequins peeking out of boxes gave her the creeps.

  “In there.” Charles stopped at a metal door.

  Diaz opened the door and stepped back for Charles to go in first with the blade. Milly followed.

  The room was painted bright white, with a long metal table lining one wall. A two-metre tall wooden crate marked Egyptian Exhibit was propped upright against the wall on the left, while a plaster figure of a caveman holding a club stood on the right.

  “Okay then,” Charles said, placing the blade on the metal table. “Do your thing.” He pulled off his gloves and handed them to Diaz.

  “Please,” she said, pulling a pair of blue rubber gloves out of her handbag.

  She picked the blade up and turned it slowly around in her hands. “It’s beaut
iful,” she said. “Truly beautiful.”

  “I know that,” Charles said. “But is it real?”

  Diaz shook her head. She, like Milly, had been so lost in staring at the blade that she seemed to have forgotten the whole pretence for why they were here. “It’s…I’d like to take it back to my lab.”

  Charles laughed. “Nice try, Diaz. This blade is not going out of my sight. Now hurry up. You have ten minutes left.”

  Milly glanced at the door. Where were the boys? If they didn’t turn up soon then she was going to have to handle this. She looked around the room for something she could use as a weapon. Her eyes fell on the caveman’s club, but as much as she disliked Charles, she didn’t think she had it in her to hurt him.

  “Hurry up,” she muttered.

  “What’s that?” Charles said. Then he stepped back. “Oh, I see.”

  “You do?” Diaz asked.

  “Yes, you are trying to ruin my night! Fake, my foot. You just said that to try and embarrass me in front of Mourdant.”

  “Mourdant?” Milly gasped.

  “Yes, my patron. He funded the trip to Mexico and he will be arriving any minute to see the blade.”

  Mourdant was coming. And that probably meant that Zyanya would be too.

  Milly stared at Diaz. “Mourdant knew my mother,” she said desperately, hoping Diaz would catch on.

  “Oh?” Diaz said, her brow furrowed. And then, as realization dawned, “Oh!”

  “Right, I’ve had enough of this. I’m calling security.”

  “You’re doing no such thing, Charles,” Diaz said. “You’re going to walk out of here and go back to your party, or – and I didn’t want to have to do this – or else I am going to tell everyone about what really happened in Belize City.”

  His eyes went wide and his skin turned a very nasty shade of grey. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t I?”

  He sputtered, looking from Diaz to the blade.

  “I kept your name out of it till now. So the question you have to ask yourself, Charles,” Diaz said, “is what’s more important to you: this blade or your reputation?”

  Charles took all of ten seconds to make his mind up. He adjusted his tie and left the room.

  Now, with Charles out of the way, they had to get the blade out of here without Mourdant stopping them. But how?

  “There,” Diaz said, pointing up at an air duct.

  “It’s too small for you. Give me the blade.”

  Diaz pulled off her jacket, wrapped it around the blade, and handed it to Milly. “Please keep it safe.”

  Milly looked up at the cover of the air duct. The ceiling was high – there was no way she was reaching it alone. “The box,” Milly said, pointing at the tall crate in the corner. If they could drag it over, she could clamber up on it.

  Diaz helped Milly drag the box underneath the vent and then steadied it. Milly scrambled up, catching the hem of her dress on a nail as she did so. She tugged at it, leaving a swathe of red cloth behind. “Oh well, guess I won’t be returning it then.”

  Holding the bundled-up blade in one hand, she reached up with her other and pushed at the air-vent cover. Mercifully it gave way. She kneeled up on the box, then stood. It swayed beneath her. She reached up, throwing herself forward as the crate went tumbling to the floor, grabbing the edge of the vent and dragging herself inside. She pulled the cover closed behind her, just as she heard the door slam open.

  JD could have kissed Diaz when he saw the key card come flying out of the gap between the elevator doors.

  He stopped it under his foot and checked to see if anyone else had seen. But the party guests were too busy with the free champagne to take any notice.

  The other boys drifted towards him, gathering around the elevator.

  “Where’s she gone?” Tom said, an unfamiliar panic in his voice.

  “It’s okay,” JD said, swooping down to retrieve the key card. He pressed it against the reader and pushed the call button. “We’re right behind.”

  It seemed like a painful wait for the elevator. The laughter from the party was too loud, the music too screechy. They were only lucky that this kind of crowd were less likely to know who they were, so they were mostly ignored. JD did see a young woman staring at him, tugging at the jacket of a man next to her. He turned quickly away, and that was when he saw the man in the sunglasses.

  “Oh no.”

  “What?” Tom said, looking to where JD was staring. “Oh. Mourdant.”

  Mourdant was drifting through the crowd, grinning widely. He stopped every now and then to kiss some of the guests on both cheeks. Behind him, looking angry and impatient, was Zyanya. She wore a long golden dress that trailed behind her and her hair was piled on her head in intricate plaits. Following them was a very large man wearing a black suit that looked considerably more expensive than the one worn by the museum security guard. They were heading for the cabinet. The empty cabinet.

  JD calculated the distance between the demons and the display. Less than a minute and they’d realize the blade was missing and then…

  He punched the call button again.

  “Come on,” Tom said.

  “I’m doing it,” JD said.

  Connor pushed the button a few more times.

  “Yeah,” JD said, “because I don’t know how to push a button.”

  But at that moment the elevator doors pinged and opened, revealing a very red-faced Charles, who rushed out.

  “B…B…” He looked as if he was struggling to speak. “Security?” he finished weakly.

  JD grabbed him by his tie and pulled him out of the elevator, before piling in with the rest of the boys. He stared out at the party, his eyes not leaving Mourdant, who had just arrived at the empty glass cabinet. As the doors started to close, the demon looked in his direction and pointed.

  “Stop them!”

  But Mourdant was too late. The doors had closed and the elevator was already moving.

  When they arrived at the basement level, the boys raced out.

  “There!” JD said, heading towards a door that was partially open.

  He kicked the door fully open and scanned the room. Diaz stood beside the statue of a caveman; on the floor was a broken wooden crate and lying next to it was what looked like a mummy.

  “Where’s Milly?” Tom said, closing the door behind him.

  Diaz pointed up.

  JD saw the scrap of red material caught on a nail of the broken box and then followed Diaz’s finger. An air vent.

  “She’s brilliant!” he said, working out what must have happened. “Brilliant.”

  She had escaped with the Blade of Shadows. So now they just needed to keep Mourdant and Zyanya from following. The demons couldn’t be far behind. Within moments they heard the ping of the elevator arriving.

  Diaz reached into her handbag and pulled out a golden lipstick. This was hardly the time for a touch-up, JD thought. But Diaz wasn’t reapplying her make-up. She reached into her bag again and pulled out a heavy green book – the one she had been checking in her office. Then she strode over to one of the walls and, consulting the book, started drawing a large circle using the red lipstick.

  “Hold them off!” she shouted.

  “Ready?” JD said.

  “Born ready,” the boys replied in unison.

  JD pulled out a knife he’d concealed inside the lining of his jacket. The boys did the same, arming themselves with the weapons they’d snuck into the museum and spreading out to make sure they wouldn’t get in each other’s way. Connor cracked his neck, Zek pulled a collapsible bow staff from his trouser leg and extended it with a flick, Tom loaded his fingers with throwing knives, while Niv stood, a knife held loosely in his hand, head tilted slightly, listening.

  “I know you’re in there,” Zyanya’s sing-song voice called out from the other side of the door, as if they were all playing a child’s game.

  “Yeah, well we know you’re out there!” Connor said, his enthus
iasm making up for the lack of sense.

  “Just give us the blade and no harm will come to you.” This was Mourdant.

  “Well, maybe a little harm.” Zyanya laughed a cold, cruel laugh.

  JD looked up at the air vent. He heard scrabbling from above. Whatever happened, he couldn’t let them get to the blade. Or to Milly. He’d die before anyone touched her.

  “I’d like to see you try,” he said.

  “Oh, please,” Mourdant said. “I beat you easily before. Go on then, priestess. I know you’ve been dying to let one of your pets out.”

  Pets? JD wondered. He didn’t like the sound of that.

  He heard a creaking through the ceiling tiles. They had to cover Milly’s escape.

  “Come and get it,” JD said – and regretted it almost instantly.

  There was a sound like fabric tearing followed by a frantic snarling as a creature burst through the door and into the room. Instead of skin, it was covered in slick, bronze fur with black spots. Golden eyes glowed in a head which had maybe once belonged to a man but was now misshapen, with an extended nose and impossibly wide mouth bristling with needle-sharp teeth. It still wore a black suit, but unnatural muscles strained the material to ripping point. Its hands – no, JD corrected himself, its paws – ended in razor-sharp claws and it snarled like the beast it so clearly was.

  JD had never seen anything like this in his life. Demons usually tried to pass as human, but this thing had given up any pretence. The creature whipped its head back and forth, looking from boy to boy.

  Connor, always the first into the fray, charged, but the creature merely batted him away, sending him flying across the room.

  The twins moved, but their way was suddenly blocked as the mummy that had been lying on the floor rose up to its rotten, bandaged feet. Gnarled hands uncurled, reaching for the twins. JD glanced to the door, where he saw a grinning Mourdant with his arms also raised. Somehow, impossibly, the demon was controlling the mummy.