*******
A shaft of sunlight slanted into the room, highlighting the dust moats suspended in the air. The low murmur of voices could be heard throughout the newly wakening house. Kael opened her eyes, fresh from her bout of meditation, slowly stretching and contracting her relaxed limbs, pumping the blood through her rested body. The sound of a heavy door opening and closing was heard and the American woman looked on in satisfaction as Ming Dao and his cronies stepped out into the strong sunlight of the new summer day.
The house became quiet again as Kael stood up from her place of concealment, stalking silently to the door and pressing an ear against it. Hearing nothing, she opened the door a crack, one blue eye peering down the length of the darkened hallway. Satisfied with the silence, she opened the door still further and stepped into the hallway, her steps silent in the plush carpeting.
Keeping fast to the walls, she traversed the entire length of the long hallway, meticulously avoiding the myriad of doors which lined the area. Peering around the corner, her body in shadow, she saw two guards standing sentinel outside one of the rooms. Opening her pouch, the tall American retrieved a small throwing star and, winding up, she threw it down the length of the second hallway to land, imbedded in the far wall. Startled, both guards looked in that direction, and Kael used the distraction to take a running leap down the hall, tackling the first bulky guard and tumbling him into his heavier partner. Both men went down hard, the breath driven from their bodies. A knife glittered in Kael’s hand as she slit the throats of first one, and then both of the guards before they had the chance to recover.
Leaving their bodies in the hallway, the woman quickly opened the door they had been guarding and stepped inside. An old woman was kneeling beside young Ming Lao, her gnarled hands tugging on his wool blazer as his eyes stayed glued to the television broadcasting western cartoons. Hearing the intruder’s entrance, the old woman gasped and fell to the floor, holding her charge in a protective embrace. “Don’t hurt him,” she begged, her wizened eyes wide and pleading. “Take what you want, but please don’t hurt the boy.”
“Oh, I don’t plan on hurting him,” Kael replied, her smile hidden behind the black fabric of her mask. “Or you either, for that matter. As long as you both stay quiet, you don’t have a thing to fear from me.”
Keeping the boy close to her body, the old woman nodded.
“Good. Now get up and step away from the boy. Nice and easy.” The woman continued to cower next to the child, her lips moving silently. “I said step away from the boy, old woman. You really don’t wanna make me angry, now.”
Looking into the fierce, glittering eyes of the intruder, the woman swallowed against the dryness in her throat and nodded, coming slowly, painfully to her feet and stepping away from her young ward.
For his part, the young boy stood silent, his almond eyes wide but unafraid as he took in the tall, menacing form of the intruder.
Reaching back into her pouch, Kael took out a small roll of duct tape, quickly ripping off a piece as she strode up to the grey-haired woman. Steadying her with one hand on her shoulder, Kael eased the tape over the other woman’s mouth, taking care to make sure her nostrils were kept free. Her grip was almost gentle as she led the woman over to the large, silk covered bed and laid her down on her stomach, grasping both wrists and bringing them behind the woman’s back and taping them together. Moving quickly down the bed, she did the same with the woman’s ankles, then stepped away, satisfied with her work. “I have a message for you to give to your master, old woman,” she said in a conversational tone. At the woman’s nod, she continued. “Tell him I have his boy. If he ever wants to see him alive again, he needs to follow my instructions to the letter. He’ll find those instructions pinned to one of the goons outside this room. Do you understand me?”
The old woman nodded again, breathing deeply through her nose and trying not to move against the aching restriction of her bound limbs.
Kael’s smile, though unseen, was terrifying in its malevolence. “Good.” Turning her fierce gaze to the still staring boy, she held out one hand. “Come with me, little Ming. We’re gonna take a little trip together. Sound like fun to you?”
After a long moment, Ming Lao reached out and grasped Kael’s hand. With a quick tug, the American pulled the boy to her and tucked him up under her arm, pulling out a hastily scrawled note and a knife from her pouch with the other. Easing the door open with her foot, Kael kept the young boy secure as she knelt down and laid the scrap of paper on one of the guard’s chest, then rammed her knife deep into his ribcage, pinning the note to his body.
Slinging Ming Lao securely across her hip, Kael quickly made her way down the deserted hallways, stepping silently back into the room through which she’d made entrance into the house. A quick look through the large French doors showed her all was clear and she stepped through them, onto the large balcony. “Hold on tight and don’t make a sound,” she warned the boy as she slipped up and over the balcony railing. Listening again for any sounds, she nodded once, to herself, and jumped off the ledge, landing softly on the thick carpeting of grass.
A quick look around, and she was off, sprinting across the estate grounds back into the covering of trees which sheltered her the night before. “Well, that was easy,” she snickered to her charge as she walked through the small wooded land that separated Ming Dao’s estate from the heavily traveled streets of the Asian city.
To Be Continued…
DESERT STORM
Part 6
by: SwordnQuill
SwordnQuil@aol.com
Disclaimers: The characters of Xena, Gabrielle, Lao Ma, Alti, Borias, and everyone else who sounds familiar belong to Pac Ren and Universal Studios. I am not making money off of this story.
Genre Disclaimer: Ok. Bear with me, please, because this is kinda tough to explain. Sometime last year, I read a story on the internet that moved me so much, I was inspired to write a sort of companion piece to it. That story was “Lost Soul Walking” by DJWP. In her words, “This is NOT UberXena fiction. It just starts out like it is.” The same can be said for this piece. While not directly related to “Lost Soul Walking”, “Desert Storm” can be considered a sort of prequel to it. It is a story, if you will, about the lifetime before the one depicted in that fabulous, outstanding story. (Can you tell I loved it?) In addition, this is somewhat of an ambitious piece of fiction, in that I am attempting (don’t know if I’ve succeeded, but I’ve attempted) to take the entire X:WP universe and modernize it. We start, in updated terms, with my version of Xena’s betrayal by Caesar (seen in “Destiny”), and continue up through the X:WP episode known as “Remember Nothing”. The plot will be very recognizable to you. It’s meant to be that way.
Special note: Because of this, Gabrielle does not appear, except in offhand mention, in a great deal of the first half of this story. Do not look for her, because you won’t find her. After all, she was not a part of ‘evil Xena’s’ life. If she were, things might have turned out differently, but because this is based on the premise of “Lost Soul Walking” it cannot happen differently. Gabrielle will, however, make her presence known, and that quite strongly, in the second half of the story. If you can hang on till then, I believe that you will not be disappointed.