Femme Fatale: The King's Deadly Temptress

After yesterday's events, Katherine was exhausted and had to close her eyes. It was no use staying awake and depleting her energy while watching the live feed of the cameras they set up at the servants' quarters. So when Amelia and Felix offered to stay up, she couldn't refuse it.

She and Damien were only asleep for an hour when someone banged on their door. The two immediately went into defensive mode—Katherine grabbed her knives from under her pillow while Damien slowly crept towards the door to check. He opened it just a crack and Amelia stood there with a stern expression.

"Butler's on the move. He's heading to the woods," she said.

Katherine was instantly awake after hearing that. They also hauled Styles out of bed, ignoring his protest and complaint about disturbing his beauty sleep.

Fifteen minutes after Katherine, Damien, and Styles were woken up, the group of five stealthily walked into the woods on a path that was parallel to the one Mr. Higgins took. Team Beta had been following the old man and so Katherine and the others followed their directions.

"What's in there?" Damien wondered as he jumped over a fallen tree, the others just right behind him.

Katherine narrowed her eyes straight ahead, her brows drawn together as she thought about it. It was nearly three o'clock in the morning, the moon was full and the woods behind the mansion was dark, an owl cooing in the distance. She was slightly freaked out, wondering if there were wild animals out there. "I don't know… I haven't been here for…" she gasped, "the graveyard."

"Graveyard?" Damien caught in step with her.

She hadn't thought about this place in a while. Her moves slowed down as she tried to dig into her memory.  How could she have forgotten? Her parents were buried there, along with their ancestors who lived in the Young Mansion a long time ago. Grandpa Theo had been telling her to go, but she still didn't have the guts to, feeling like she had let her parents down for all the bad decisions she made. She couldn't face them yet.

Taking a deep breath, Katherine continued her steps. "There's an old church right next to it. It's been abandoned for many years. You don't think Deborah's been there all along, do you?" she wondered, glancing at them.

Leaves crunched underneath their shoes as they moved forward. It took a minute before someone answered her.

"Right under our noses? I think it's the best place to hide," said Damien.

Katherine hated to admit that he could be right. They were too preoccupied looking for Deborah anywhere but in the estate. If Deborah really was in that church, how bold was she? And to think that Mr. Higgins was helping her too? The thought of that made her blood boil. She needed to catch her. That vile woman needed to pay!

"The hell is this old man doing in a cemetery?" one of the men from Team Beta hissed through the radio in Felix's hand. The team was a couple of minutes ahead of them.

They exchanged glances and then hastened their steps. 

"What's going on?" Felix spoke into the radio.

"He's walking past the gravestones. I think he's headed to the old church."

The graveyard and the church were still technically on the estate, but people from the mansion rarely visited the place. No services were held there anymore unless it was for a funeral.

Katherine broke into a sprint and the others followed. She was breathing heavily as she stopped next to one of the Team Beta men. He pointed at Mr. Higgins who had just arrived at the front of the dilapidated church, but there was no need as Katherine's stare was already fixed at the back of Mr. Higgins' head.

The church had old limestone brick walls, vines crawling on its sides. The weeds and grass were tall around the building, a sign that it hadn't been maintained for a very long time. No one would guess that someone would want to visit there at this time of dawn, let alone sleep there.

The butler looked from side to side as if he was checking his surroundings and possible eyes, but the team was carefully hidden behind shrubs and trees several feet away. It was impossible to see them in the dark.

Someone stepped on a twig, the sound of a stick snapping crunched in the air, causing Mr. Higgins to snap his head in the direction of it. The old man flashed his lights to the shrubs where they were hiding.

All of them crouched so low onto the dirt, nearly lying on their front. They dug their elbows and knees into the earth and moss as they glared at Styles. Of course, it was Styles who had stepped on the twig. Damien dropped to the ground, swiftly pulling Styles along with him. He covered Styles's mouth, his strong arms caging the other from behind to stop him from moving. Styles's eyes bulged out of their sockets in fright.

None of them breathed as they waited for Mr. Higgins to do something. The butler looked creepy at this moment, wearing a dark robe over his long Johns, his hair gray and thinning, his skin wrinkly, and he wore a scowl as he held the flashlight in one hand, staring into the woods. Fortunately, the old man seemed to ignore the noise. He faced the church door once again. Then he inserted a key into the lock, pushed the door open, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. 

Damien slowly released Styles and Styles gasped a lungful of air as if he'd been deprived of it for a long time. The rest of them released their breaths when Mr. Higgins was no longer in sight. However, they remained hidden.

Styles army-crawled between Damien and Felix, and asked, "What do you think he's doing in there?"

"He can't be praying at this time. That's insane," Felix muttered under his breath.

The other men from Team Beta surrounded the church, but they stayed at a safe distance, just in case Mr. Higgins was looking out the window. The area was totally quiet, except for the occasional cooing of the owl and the brushing of the wind on the leaves. Everyone stared at the church where the butler disappeared. Well, everyone except Katherine. 

She looked over the cemetery, her heart hammering in her chest. Her parents were there somewhere. A sudden urge to move overwhelmed her, wanting to go there and search for their gravestones. If Deborah really was in the church, Katherine had no words for that woman for staying very close to the people she had killed.

"Should we go inside?" Amelia wondered, interrupting Katherine's thoughts.

"No. Let's wait," Damien answered. He didn't want to make a move in case the butler was baiting them, or that they were wrong about what he was doing inside that creepy church. They had to be patient.

The door to the church swung open, and Mr. Higgins came out. He was inside for about twenty minutes. 

The team waited for Mr. Higgins to walk far away before they made any move. Damien signaled to Felix, and Felix informed Team Beta to follow the butler.

When they were sure that Mr. Higgins was far enough, Katherine and Amelia covertly walked toward the church. Katherine drew out her knives, twirling them in her fingers as they crept closer. The men stayed hidden while the dangerous women arrived at the door. Katherine pressed herself on the wall to the left of the door and Amelia to the right of it.

The two women looked over to where the men were hidden, waiting for their sign, to make sure they were watching for them—in case there were booby traps. When Damien raised his hand and gave them the "ok" sign, Amelia knocked on the door.

They waited.

For a second, there was no sound. No movement from the inside.

They weren't sure what or who was there, but they had high hopes that it was Deborah—or else, they no longer knew what to do.

After a moment of nothing, Amelia raised her hand once again to knock. But before her knuckles could touch the wood, the door swung open.

Lo and behold, Deborah Young in pajamas answered the door, sighing in a tired voice, "Did you forget something?"

Katherine moved at lightning speed, swinging her knife up and pressing it to Deborah's throat a hair's breadth away from the skin. "Gotcha."