Chapter 2 - The Glass and the FlameThe sound of breaking glass was immediately followed by the sharp, deafening crack-crack-crack of suppressed automatic gunfire.
Before I could even scream, Khalid’s lead bodyguard—the scar-faced man—tackled me around the waist, throwing us both behind the heavy oak structure of the maître d’ station. Silver trays, wine glasses, and mahogany chairs exploded into splinters above our heads as a hail of bullets shredded the dining room.
“Suppression fire! West entrance!” the second bodyguard screamed, drawing a heavy matte-black pistol from beneath his jacket and returning fire through the cloud of dust and plaster.
I hit the marble floor hard, the wind knocked out of me. My silver tray clattered away, rolling across the floor before being crushed under the heavy combat boot of a man dressed entirely in dark gray tactical gear.
The attacker didn't look like a standard mercenary. Over his dark uniform, he wore a chest harness adorned with strange, bronze-embossed sigils—a sun rising over an inverted crescent. Across his helmet, a night-vision visor glowed with a faint, ghostly green light.
Khalid was beside me, crouched low, his expensive coat ruined with white drywall dust. He pulled a compact pistol from his ankle holster, his hands remarkably steady for a corporate titan.
“Tariq!” Khalid yelled over the deafening noise to his scar-faced guard. “The service elevator! Now!”
“They’ve jammed the secondary exits, sir!” Tariq shouted back, firing three rapid shots that dropped one of the tactical attackers near the shattered front entrance. “This is a full ambuscade! They were already parked down the street!”
“They intercepted the signal from the restaurant,” Khalid muttered under his breath, grabbing my shoulder and dragging me toward the kitchen corridor. “They have listening posts set up near every major hub in the city!”
I scrambled on my hands and knees, my heart hammering so violently against my ribs I thought my chest would burst. The world had turned into a terrifying blur of flashing muzzle blasts, shouting men, and the metallic smell of blood and cordite mixing with the aroma of roasted lamb and truffle oil.
We burst through the heavy double swinging doors into the commercial kitchen. The kitchen staff—cooks, dishwashers, and line managers—were huddled under stainless steel prep tables, screaming in panic.
“Out the back!” Tariq barked, waving his gun toward the alley exit. “Move, move, move!”
We ran down the narrow stainless-steel hallway, past roaring deep fryers and sizzling grills. But as Tariq reached for the heavy metal bar of the alley door, the steel door buckled inward with a thunderous BANG.
A flashbang grenade bounced across the tiled floor, spinning like a top right toward my feet.
“Cover your eyes!” Khalid roared, grabbing me by the nape of my neck and shoving my face down into his chest as he threw his heavy coat over my head.
The world turned blindingly white, accompanied by a sound so loud it felt like a physical fist punching into my brain. The sheer pressure shockwave knocked us sideways against a row of aluminum sheet pans, sending them crashing down in a deafening metallic cascade.
My ears roared with a high-pitched whine. My vision was swimming with red and purple spots. I couldn't tell which way was up, but I felt strong hands hauling me to my feet.
Khalid was pulling me toward a side service stairwell used for trash disposal. Tariq was on the floor near the alley door, motionless, his weapon lying inches from his outstretched hand. The second bodyguard was engaging two more gray-clad mercenaries near the dishwashing station, buying us seconds with his life.
“Hannah! Walk!” Khalid growled into my ear, his voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a deep well. “If you fall now, we both die!”
I forced my legs to move. Terror proved to be a powerful stimulant. I practically threw myself up the concrete stairs, following Khalid as he pushed through a fire door that opened into a dark, snow-dusted side alley off 54th Street.
The wind hit us like an ice-cold slap, momentarily clearing the fog from my brain.
A black SUV—different from Khalid’s—was idling in the alley, its headlights cutting through the swirling snow. Standing beside the open rear door was a tall, thin man wearing a charcoal trench coat and holding a carved wooden cane.
Despite the freezing cold, he wore no gloves. His hands were long, thin, and covered in intricate, dark blue tattoos that ran from his knuckles up into his sleeves—patterns that I recognized instantly.
They were Himyaritic script glyphs. The sister dialect to the language my grandfather had taught me.
“Khalid,” the tall man said softly. His voice was smooth, cultured, and chillingly polite, carrying effortlessly over the howl of the blizzard. “And the little bird from Astoria. How remarkable. We spent thirty years hunting your grandfather across four continents, only to find his legacy serving champagne on Fifth Avenue.”
Khalid put himself between me and the tall man, raising his pistol with a lock-jawed glare. “Vane. I should have known the House of Iron would send its chief executioner.”
The man named Vane smiled, leaning lightly on his wooden cane. “Lower the toy, Khalid. You are a brilliant financier, but you are not a soldier. Your guards are dead or dying inside. The police are ten minutes away—plenty of time for me to put the girl in the vehicle and leave your body in the slush.”
“She knows nothing,” Khalid lied, his voice dropping an octave. “She’s just a girl who memorized a book.”
“Do not insult my intelligence,” Vane said smoothly. He raised his bare, tattooed right hand. “She answered the Third Oath in the native tongue of the Rawa. She doesn't just know the words, Khalid. She has the blood. She is the granddaughter of Ibrahim Al-Rawa, the chief curator of the lost library.”
My heart stopped.
Ibrahim Al-Rawa.
My grandfather’s name on his naturalization papers had been Abraham Reed. He had always claimed he was from a small village in northern Greece, that he had fled during the turmoil of the Second World War. It was all a lie. A century-old fabrication designed to erase his identity and keep me safe.
“Your grandfather was a very foolish man, Hannah,” Vane said, turning his cold, amber-colored eyes directly to me. “He thought he could hide the voice of God in an antique shop in Queens. He thought if he kept you ignorant of your true heritage, you would live a quiet, unremarkable life. But blood always speaks. Language always demands to be heard.”
Vane stepped toward us, his hand reaching out.
“Come with me quietly,” Vane said gently, as if speaking to a frightened animal. “The House of Iron does not wish to harm you. We merely require your voice to open the inner sanctum. Give us the spoken key, and I will grant you wealth beyond your grandfather’s wildest dreams.”
“Don't listen to him, Hannah!” Khalid shouted.
“If I refuse?” I managed to say, my voice trembling, though I fought with everything I had to keep it steady.
Vane’s smile faded, replaced by an expression of cold, absolute detachment. “Then I will cut your vocal cords from your throat, take you to the sands of Ubar, and use the dead frequency generator we built twenty years ago to force your larynx to resonate until the doors crumble. It will be far more painful, but the result will be precisely the same.”
Before Vane could take another step, a sharp, mechanical thud echoed from the roof above the alley.
A heavy metal trash bin, weighing at least two hundred pounds, tumbled off the four-story fire escape directly above Vane’s SUV, crashing onto the hood with a thunderous crunch of steel and shattering glass.
Vane spat a curse, jumping backward as sparks showered the alley.
From the shadows of the fire escape ladder, a figure dropped down into the snow with the light, silent grace of a leopard. It was a woman, dressed in a thick dark parka, combat boots, and carrying a heavy tactical crossbow.
“Get in the truck!” she yelled, her voice crisp and sharp.
She didn't mean Vane’s SUV. She pointed toward a beat-up, salt-stained snowplow truck idling near the end of the alley.
Khalid didn't hesitate. He grabbed my forearm, dragging me through the deep snow toward the snowplow. Behind us, Vane’s men recovered, opening fire with their weapons, but the woman on the fire escape fired two heavy steel bolts from her crossbow with terrifying accuracy, pinning one mercenary’s arm to the brick wall and shattering the windshield of Vane’s car.
We scrambled into the cab of the snowplow. The driver—a burly man with a thick beard and a orange high-vis jacket—slammed the truck into reverse, the massive steel blade on the front scraping against the alley walls with a shower of orange sparks as we backed out onto 54th Street at dangerous speed.
I collapsed against the vinyl seat, gasping for air, my hands trembling uncontrollably.
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Khalid leaned back against the headrest, his forehead slick with sweat, his eyes fixed on me.
“Welcome to your real family history, Hannah,” he panted quietly as the truck swerved out into the roaring whiteout of the Manhattan blizzard. “Now you know why your grandfather taught you how to speak to the dead.”
