Jana woke suddenly, her eyes wide open - total silence but for the receding memory of a sound in her mind. She lay still, her only company the pale light and shadow swaying on the opposite wall.

Straining to every sound she could hear the wooden floors groan as the last of the days heat escaped into the night, the relentless beat of the clock working its way through the increments of a minute, the cacophony of noises that are the ebb of the night - the wind in the trees, predators foraging, the call of a bird and its lost child.

These were familiar to Jana because they were the sounds of every night, but her instincts told her there was something else. Slowly pulling the sheets away from her body, she lowered her feet to the cold wooden floor, never taking her eyes from the bedroom door and its handle.

If there really was someone outside the room, then they had negotiated Dimitri downstairs, which meant they must also be very capable. Jana’s first thought was for her daughter in the next room.

Holding a long wooden pin between her teeth she gently pulled the pistol from her bedside draw, a familiar feel in the palm of her hand. Using the pad of her thumb she flicked off the safety, then stepped towards the door, quietly, softly. Eyes constantly fixed on the door handle.

With one long pace remaining she paused, sifting through the familiar sounds for the unfamiliar – the barely discernible murmur of material sliding across material. Silence. And then again, as if someone slowly and meticulously stepping across an unknown floor. There was no way to tell whether the sound was just the other side of the door, or outside her daughters. Winding her long hair into a bunch onto the back of her head, she pulled the pin from her mouth. Her mistake.

The door sprung silently, wide open. A dark human shape flowed through the gap and immediately towards her. Striking something hard across her right cheek, the force pin-wheeling her body around and sprawling towards the floor. Both gun and pin were lost from her grasp, hearing the pistol clatter to the floor.

Her shoulder first painfully hit the wooden edge of the bed before she thumped hard onto the floor but had no time to dwell on the pain. Gloved hands laced into her hair, dragging her bodily onto the bed, hands flailing desperately for some potential weapon but only succeeding in swiping the bedside lamp across the room.

No sooner had she been pulled fully onto the bed, the attacker climbed over and straddled her, in his left hand she glimpsed a short darkly reflective cosh. It swung down painfully across her temple. Desperately hanging onto consciousness she blinked away the white light, her goal to simply give Jane all the time she could to wake and run, out of her window, onto the roof, down into the street. They had drilled her repeatedly. She opened her mouth to scream a warning but the cosh was forced past her lips into her mouth. It pushed down to the back of her throat, gagging, the scream lost before it even left her lungs.

Jana’s mind raced, realising now that this was almost certainly a women, strong and agile, and very quick. But not likely to be sidetracked by her body. The cosh at the back of her throat was pushing down on her tongue, limiting the ability to draw in oxygen and rendering her bucking hips and flailing arms almost useless.

Reaching up to a belt fastened across her chest, the attacker pulled free a short knife. The part of the blade not coated in blood refracted the soft light of the night as the dark body lowered itself, stopping just inches from the fist jammed down against Jana's mouth.

Behind a dark stocking, she could see the face was definitely female, but one that was unimaginably strong. The voice was English, with a hint of accent that gave the language a lilt. Like nothing she had heard before;

“Do not fear, your daughter like you, like your noble guard, will die quickly.” With this the dark figure sat back upright and pressed the end of the knife against Jana’s temple. Jana was powerless to even move, the women's strong thighs held her in place, her oxygen starved body was barely capable of sucking in enough air to remain conscious. Watching the knife rise to the summit of the impending blow her mind whispered a hope that her baby was awake and running as fast as her young legs would carry.

With the knife beginning its descent, her eyelids blinked one last time, taking in the attackers shoulder shifting sideways to increase momentum, but being met by a small dark shadow. A small shadow illuminated in part by the moons light, a small bare arm wrapping itself around the assailants neck, breaking the momentum of the swing while stabbing once, hard at the stockinged head. Both shadows rolled across the bed and and onto the floor with a thump.

Clambering after the bodies, half spitting, half pulling the cosh free and throwing it to one side Jana leaned over the edge and looked down into her daughters wide brown eyes. The stockinged head lay lifeless to one side with the tip of her wooden hairpin protruding from the ear. Her daughter looked back at her, fear and battles adrenalin trembling her bottom lip, her body poised not sure whether to reach up for a hug or recoil from a rebuke.

“Jane ... baby!” Jana reached down and Jane scampered quickly into her arms.

“Are there more?” She could feel her daughter's head move slowly from side to side, and then a few seconds later warm tears on her naked shoulder. Silence, save for their own breathing and the relentless progress of the clock. The shadows and pale light continued their dance upon the wall, oblivious.

“Why didn't you run baby, why didn't you run!” She tried hard to pull the rebuke from her tone, turning it instead to a slightly desperate pitch. Moments passed and she felt the small arms tighten around her neck, “I couldn't leave you mummy ... ”