The Hunt

50

"Amyra?!"

"Wow! How did you know it's me? No wonder you're a smart girl." Her voice reeked of sarcasm.
"Where's May?"

"She's absolutely fine. She's sitting just in front of me, obeying every order I give. She even told me your name! Such a loyal duck, isn't she?" She chuckled darkly.

May told her my name!?
Even if it was most probably true, there might be some reason behind it.

"May? Who's May?" Dan whispered.
Drew clasped his hand on his mouth to stop talking.

"I don't care about that. Just let her go. Your problem is me, not her."

"I won't let her go. If you really want to save her, fetch her yourself. Or, you can leave her here in my care, and run. But I don't have much time. So why don't you hurry up and decide?"
I knew it was a trap. But I couldn't back off now. May needed me.

"Where are you?"

"I'm in the shrine."

"Shrine?"

"Yes, hurry up now. I'll be waiting."
Saying that, she hung up.

I tried calling her again, but the phone was switched off.

"Will someone tell me who this May is?" Dan asked again.

"She's an ex-Syndicate. Left it several months ago. I asked her for help, and she brought us here. But..."

"But?"

"But she got caught, by Amyra." Drew completed the sentence.

"She said she's in the shrine, right? Do you guys know about that?" Dan's query made me remember a vague memory of this word.
Shrine.
Didn't Rio say that he got his tattoo from a shrine?

That meant the shrine is actually here, in Amyra's mansion!

"We need to find the place. I have heard about it before, from Rio."

"The guy who threw me here got a call on his phone, he was talking about a shrine too." Dan added.

"So we need to follow the route he went through." I concluded.

Both of them nodded their heads.

"What are we waiting for? Let's go!" Saying that, Drew headed outside the room. We hurried behind him to catch up.

When the guy left the room, we had kept an eye on him till he went out of sight.
Following the same way, we ran with our flashlights on.

But the way led us to a dead end.

The dark wall was covered with moss on the edges, the old paint peeling and cracking all over.

"A dead end? Absolutely what we need right now." Dan spat on the ground.

Drew went to the wall, touching it slowly. It might be the same kind of wall we saw at the hall with portraits.

But there were no signs of any door.

Dan moved his flashlight to all the nooks of the space, so as to find something. A carton with a few carpentry tools sat in a corner. He brought it close, and examined everything inside.

He picked up the iron rod, which was long but old, covered with rust and soil.

"This might come in handy." Dan started swinging it like a sabre, cutting through the air.
His eyes fell on the ceiling, which had a wooden plank fixed there.

"Guys, look what I've found." He went towards the plank, and started poking it with the iron rod.

Drew and I came over, our flashlights illuminating the dark damp on the ceiling, with a square wooden board fixed in between.