This honor I give to you, my warrior angel, my Gabriel." Vennard held up the sword and offered it to the young man.
Gabriel took it and lifted it high-then the two men stepped aside, revealing a low altar behind them. It had its own spotlight, too.
A dark-haired woman was chained naked to the stone, legs spread wide, arms outstretched. A second sacrifice-blond-haired and pale-knelt nearby, shaking in a thin white shift.
On the altar, the woman’s head was lolling in a drugged daze. But she must have sensed what was to come and struggled against the chains as Gabriel turned to her with his sword. He stepped far enough aside to reveal the woman’s face-but the tattoos across her body were already enough to identify her.
At least for one of them.
"Jolienne!" Renny’s cry shot out of the tunnel like a crossbow’s bolt.
All eyes turned in their direction.
Before Seichan could move, a large figure stepped across the mouth of the tunnel-a third guard. He’d been hidden to the side, ensuring no one left. She silently cursed Renny. With no time to devise a strategy, she simply had to improvise.
As the guard raised his rifle, Seichan shot him in the knee. The pop of her pistol was explosive in the confined space. The.357 round at such close range blew out his kneecap in a mist of blood and bone.
She leaped as the guard screamed and toppled forward. She caught him up, embracing him with one arm like a long-lost lover, and used her momentum to carry him into the room. She pointed her SIG Sauer past his body and targeted the guard to the right as he stepped clear of the pillar. She shot him in the face.
Screams erupted across the room. The flock scattered to all sides, like a flushed covey of quail.
The remaining guard fired at her, strafing wildly, but she used her new "lover" as a body shield, bulldozing forward. Rounds pelted into the man’s Kevlar armor, but one bullet struck the back of his head. His struggling weight went suddenly limp.
She carried the deadweight another two steps, enough to get a good angle around the pillar. She fired at the exposed man, squeezing the trigger twice.
She clipped the guard’s ear, knocking his head back.
The second shot ripped through his exposed throat, severing his spine. He crashed to floor.
Seichan dropped the guard in her arms and took up a shooter’s stance, aiming toward the altar.
Vennard had retreated behind it. Gabriel, still dazed and slow to react from the drugs he’d ingested, looked confused. He still held the sword at the throat of the bound woman. A trickle of blood flowed from where the blade’s razored edge had already sliced that tender skin.