“I’m right behind you. Go!”
Shawna instantly obeyed. Old, broken headstones clawed at her clothing, blades of grass tickled her nose. She all but tasted the mud of the earth. She heard Alistair inching along right behind her.
She stopped, cringing, as the sound of a bullet bouncing off stone just beside her rang loudly in the night. A shadow loomed huge above her as Hawk stood—just long enough to return a barrage of fire from a gun he had apparently been carrying discreetly.
“Get in the vault, all of you!” Hawk commanded, falling back to the earth again, behind a large headstone.
Shawna saw Skylar rise to a crouching position and run up the three steps and slip into the vault just ahead of another round of bullets that came crashing into the masonry and shrubs that surrounded them. Shawna lifted her head just in time to see a creature in a cowled cloak slip behind the vault far to their left.
“My god!” she breathed, incredulous. “To our left!” she cried to Hawk.
“Will both of you get in there!” he cried back. She realized that he was reloading his gun. “Now!” he said, and she saw him rise, now firing with rapid precision in the direction she had pointed him.
“Shawna, go, get in the vault,” Alistair hissed.
“Alistair, did you see?—”
“I saw.”
“Who—”
“Up, cousin, now, quick!” Alistair urged her. He drew her to her feet. A bullet crashed into stone right by her head as she dashed into the McCloud burial vault, Alistair right at her back, pressing her forward all the way.
“Down here!” Skylar whispered, slipping her arms around Shawna and bringing her down to hunch low just behind the heavy wooden door.
Hawk fired rapidly then, rising as he did so, backing his way toward the vault. He slipped through the doorway which they’d kept ajar for his entry. He leaned against the cold stone of the vault then, inhaling deeply. “There are at least three of them.”
“Them—who?” Shawna gasped.
“Your cloaked figures.” Hawk looked down at them in the shadowy darkness. “There’s no other way in here—and no way out—other than this door?”
Shawna shook her head. “There’s another room to our left, but no other way in, no other way out.”
On the ground, she crept closer to where he stood just inside the doorway, carefully trying to look out. She covered her ears and leaned flat against the stone as the firing started up from outside once again, bullet after bullet grazing off or plowing into the mausoleum.
“They’re trying to make me return fire, run out of ammunition,” Hawk said.
“Will you—run out soon?” Shawna asked.
“I have a couple more rounds on me, but…well, we could use some help down here…” he murmured. Bullets crashed into the stone again. Hawk angled out the door, taking careful aim. He fired, then leaned back against the stone as more bullets came flying their way.
“I’ve got my dirk, if they come close,” Alistair said.
“Eventually, they’ll have to come—here,” Hawk said.
“I don’t think they know that we’re all in here yet,” Shawna said. “The fog is so thick…they were surely as blinded as we were.”
“As we are!” Alistair said.
Once again, Hawk inched nearer the door. To their left were another three family vaults. A number of hemlocks grew in the area, and stone sarcophagi littered the earth along with angels, archangels, and more.
Then, for a moment, framed in the moonlight, was one of the cowled figures. The hood was low over its face.
A cloaked figure, its features hidden by the fall of its cowl. A figure, just like those figures she had seen in her dream.
Calling her name.
Coming for her…