“After you,” Doyle bowed motioning for her to take the lead with his left hand.
Helena started running, she wasn’t entirely used to running. Most of her clothing wasn’t made for exercise of any kind. The closer she got to the darker area of the pool she made out a speck of light or lighter colored something reflecting what little illumination there was in the area.
She stopped running, and Doyle pulled up next to her, “I think something is out ahead of us,” she whispered into Doyle’s ear drawing her sword.
Doyle pulled his pistol, and they started sneaking towards the perceived light area in front of them wholly focused, ready for any attack.
The closer they got Helena saw someone dressed in white, arms and legs stretched out like a giant X.
“Someone is there,” Helena began picking up the pace. She hoped upon hope it was Missy and somehow, they got there before anything had started. Doyle followed right on her heels, his breathing heavy behind her when they reached a woman. Dressed in a white robe, a white hood she had been shackled to a Saint Andrews Cross attached to some mechanical contraption in the darkest part of the shadows.
“Doyle get her out of these bindings,” Helena hissed, climbing on the device, enabling her to reach the woman’s head. To Helen’s surprise, the body moved, she pulled the hood off, and there hung Missy staring back at her. She looked just like her picture, but her hair had been cut short her mouth gagged with a piece of line tied into a knot and lashed behind her head.
Helena removed Missy’s gag, and the first words out of her mouth were, “It’s a trap.”
“Doyle, we need to get out of here get those shackles off, shoot them off!”
Helena looked down and saw Doyle had placed the gun on the pool deck while he worked to unlatch the shackles. He reached for the pistol, and Helena caught a whiz and thunk, as she witnessed an arrow penetrate Doyle’s right wrist. At first, shocked to find a shaft of wood sticking through his lower arm, held his attention. Then the pain lancing up his arm caused him to scream in pain.
On the cue of Doyle scream the electric lights flashed on, bathing the space in bright light. There a hundred-feet away slithered the Naga, Sister Ping. Helena jumped off the Saint Andrew’s Cross and grabbed Doyle’s gun.
Missy let out a brilliant scream at her first site of the monster. The Naga nocked another arrow slithering side to side. Helena knelt on one knee, took her best aim with an unfamiliar pistol, squeezed the trigger, and fired six shots each one successively higher than the first up into the glass over the Sister Ping’s head.
“Be careful it is fully automatic it will walk up,” Doyle spoke through clenched teeth clearly in pain.
Like a mother bear protecting her cub, Helena stayed between the Naga and Doyle not giving her a clear shot for a coup de grâce. She pulled off another three shots more controlled this time but missed to the right.
“Why isn’t she attacking?” Helena whispered to the wounded Doyle behind her.
“Did you see the arrow sticking through my arm?” Doyle’s voice grew weaker, either through blood loss or the shock of the damage.
The creature stayed just out of range, she lost count of how many shots she’d fired, so she simply started shooting hoping for the best. She held the gun as steady as possible and tried to lead the target like she was using a hunting rifle aimed at the creature’s bare breasts and pulled the trigger steady. Her last three shots hit the Naga in the right arm, the right chest, and left chest, it was a pure luck of the Irish moment. With the last shot, the slide stayed open. Helena watched as the Naga dropped.
Helena turned to inspect the blood flowing out of Doyle’s arm, she not knowing if the bone was broken, artery cut, or if he was going to live or die.
“You must break the arrow... pull it out... wrap my arm... don’t let my fingers... turn blue--” Doyle passed out.
Helena had no medical kit, she certainly had no medical training, she took her riding jacket off and tossed it next to her sword. Then she ripped the sleeve off her white long-sleeve shirt. She looked at the arrow sticking through his forearm and grabbed its jet-black staff and snapped the piece of wood. Grateful Doyle had passed out, for once he was quiet, and that would’ve hurt if he were still conscious. She did the best imitation of Lane wrapping her horse’s ankles before she would go jumping.
“I told you she was resourceful,” a deep baritone voice echoed through the glass wall behind her causing her to spin and lunge for her jacket and sword that no longer lay there.
Helena could see the hem of a black robe, now five paces away. Even worse Sister Ping had risen from the lump that she had fallen into and now slithering towards the group.
She scowled up at the face wearing the black robe and saw nothing but a black hood and cloth that completely hid his face. Even his hands covered in thin black gloves the man was an enigma.
“Yes, wonderful, I think you possess something of mine,” Sister Ping held out her hand waiting for the mysterious man to deliver something.
“Yes, and I think you owe me something,” said the mysterious man, holding Helena’s jacket with his right hand his left hand outstretched to receive something from the monster.
For the first time, Helena noticed that the Naga had a cross of leather straps separating her naked bosom. One was for her quiver of arrows, the second held a satchel slung over the opposite shoulder. She reached into her bag and pulled out a smaller red velvet pouch.
The human, clad in black and
