Cars, people, everything fell and Makepeace kept running, kept his fingers locked around Maybourne’s arm, as dust and debris bloomed out around them.
Coughing, streaked with dirt and gasping for air, they eventually made it back to his SUV. Maybourne was wheezing so badly he was retching, bent double, so he didn’t see the shadow fall. But Makepeace saw it and his stomach sank into his boots.
“Oh God,” he breathed as a huge, dark shape descended. He grabbed Maybourne’s shirt, hauling him upright, making him watch. “Look,” he hissed, as the ha’tak landed on Cheyenne Mountain, sending an avalanche of boulders and rock cascading down its sides. “This is on us, Maybourne. We did this.”
Coughing, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, Maybourne shook his head and spat concrete dust out onto the ground. He fixed Makepeace with a hard look. “It’s not over yet, Colonel.”
There were three Amam, Teal’c saw, and their business here was pleasure.
He had seen Jaffa stalk with the same hungry intent through the slave camps of Apophis, although the appetite they had sought to slake had been of a different nature.
They walked in silence, these Amam, one taking the lead and his seconds — Teal’c had no doubt of the power structure — a step behind at either shoulder. Their white hair gleamed like bone in the darkness, their pallid skin almost luminous, long coats flaring out behind them.
At his side, O’Neill stirred uneasily; he was afraid that these creatures could sense his presence.
“They hunt for sport,” Teal’c assured him.
“Yeah, and I’m the moose.”
Teal’c did not fully understand the reply but did not query it. The Amam were close now, passing within an arm’s reach of the place where they crouched, concealed. He slowed his breathing in the manner Master Bra’tac had taught him many years ago, letting the air flow in and out of his lungs like the tide flowed in and out of a river mouth. O’Neill simply stopped breathing.
The Amam’s heavy boots crunched into the earth, their eyes scanning the camp for movement. They were one step past them, two, walking on until Teal’c could only see their backs.
O’Neill released his breath in a low sigh that would have given him away had the enemy not moved on. Looking at Teal’c, he gestured that they should circle back toward Hunter’s house and Teal’c nodded. But before either of them could move, a terrified voice shouted out — an inarticulate cry of fear — and a young boy bolted from under a piece of fallen wooden paneling that lay almost beneath the feet of the Amam.
O’Neill made a strangled noise as the boy — perhaps ten years old — tried to run. He was not fast enough and one of the Amam snatched him up, its clawed hand seizing the child’s shirt and lifting him off his feet. It held him up, legs kicking, close to its face.
The boy was sobbing, clutching at the creature’s arm. “Jem!” he wailed. “Jem!”
O’Neill rose to his feet, but Teal’c grabbed his arm, holding him back. “You cannot.”
And then someone else appeared, a thin girl — older than the boy, but not full grown — with wide, frightened eyes and tears on her cheeks. She held a large stick in her shaking hands, as she emerged from her hiding place to stand before the Amam.
“Let him go,” she said in a trembling voice. “Put him down.”
The leader of the Amam hissed at her, its teeth bared. She flinched, let out a wretched sob, and fell back a couple of steps. But she did not run.
“Jem…” the boy was still yelling. “Jem!”
“Please,” she begged. “Please, let him go. He’s only little.”
The Amam took another step forward, but the girl held her ground despite the stick in her hands shaking so violently that she could hardly hold it.
“Screw this,” O’Neill snarled.
“O’Neill —”
“No,” he said, shaking off Teal’c’s hand. “I have to.”
Teal’c inclined his head toward the girl. “I will circle around behind her. Wait until I am in position.”
O’Neill gave a short nod of thanks and in two steps he was out in the open, moving around to the back of the Amam, his gun trained on their commander. “Put him down,” he yelled and the Amam turned in surprise. “You heard me. Put the kid down or I’ll blow your goddamn head off.”
Its expression was curious more than fearful, head cocked to one side as it turned away from the girl and moved toward O’Neill. Teal’c made use of the distraction to creep through the shadows toward the girl, placing the Amam between himself and O’Neill.