by Martha Carr
I’m supposed to be a pro. I’m supposed to help people when it’s advantageous for me, not do people favors—especially those involving risking my life for someone like James Brownstone.
Shay shook her head. She’d need to consider doing another mission with Brownstone. If this was all just some weird attraction, spending more time around him might cure her of it. Hell, it’d make the Professor happy for them to team up again as well.
Her stomach clenched at the alternative. Brownstone might be becoming something more than a partner to her.
Shit. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
Shay stared at the stone oven as Peyton paced back and forth in front of it. “You do know that if this sucks, I’ll be spending my entire time on the job thinking about terrible pizza. It might distract me at a critical moment. Bad pizza could get me killed.”
“Give him a chance. He’s been practicing on me and I’m still alive.” Lily was wearing a Chanel sweater Shay recognized from the warehouse. She let it go. It was nice to see some of the clothes getting some use. Still, Peyton was rubbing off on the kid in some strange ways.
Peyton snorted. “Bad pizza might get you killed?”
“It’s possible.”
“Well, don’t worry. I’ve had a lot more practice. I can guarantee this pizza won’t get you killed.”
“And how much of that practice involved sprinklers?” Shay inquired.
Peyton furrowed his brow. “Only the one time.”
Lily held up two fingers.
Shay face-palmed. “You know, you might have to face the cold reality that you’re just not meant to be a pizza man. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. It’s not like I should be a life coach or a nun.”
“Nope, I’ve got this. Every failure gives me new data, and I adjust. I’m closing in on the target.” Peyton slid the paddle underneath the pizza and transferred it to the tray. “It’s like anything else in life—just got to practice. I’ve been paying attention, traveling around, and having pizza all over LA. I’ve been looking at their ingredients and asking questions.”
“Asking questions?” Shay raised an eyebrow. “And how did that go?”
“Surprisingly well, once I explained that I was an amateur trying to learn to cook at home. Most places I’ve asked have given me tips.”
“Huh.” Shay shrugged. “Okay, let’s try it out, then. See if you actually applied any of those tips.”
Peyton eagerly sliced the pepperoni pizza and placed a piece on a sandwich-sized paper plate. He handed it to Shay and awaited her verdict. Lily bit her lip, waiting for a sign.
Shay took several deep breaths and bit into the pizza. She tilted her head and chewed slowly. Good balance of flavors, good texture. No bizarre vinegar taste. She swallowed.
“I should pull my gun on you,” she announced.
Peyton’s shoulders slumped. “It’s that bad?”
Shay laughed. “No, it’s actually pretty good.”
“Why pull your gun then?”
“Because you’re obviously some wizard pretending to be Peyton.”
The man smirked. “I’m no wizard. I’m the Pizza King.” He high-fived Lily and strutted back and forth while Lily let out a whoop and held out her hands for a plate of pizza.
“Finally!” she exclaimed.
Shay snorted. “Not yet, you’re not. More of a Pizza Squire, but if you have improved this much in such a short period, who the hell knows?”
“You’re saying it was a good thing I bought the oven?”
“I didn’t shoot you over it, did I?”
Peyton gave a piece to Lily and picked up a slice of the pizza and took a bite. His face lit up. “Damn, this is good!”
25
Shay parked her black rental van on the beach at the end of Montrose Avenue. The heavy cloud cover blocked the stars and the moon, but light from the high-rises on the other side of Michigan Avenue reflected off the water, slightly illuminating the beach.
If anyone wandered into the area they might not spot the van from a distance, but she still risked discovery.
Fortunately, at this time of night only the homeless and coyotes wandered the area, and the tomb raider hadn’t spotted either of those. The icy cutting wind sweeping across Lake Michigan was more than enough to deter anyone without a strong reason to be there that night.
The tomb raider had chosen the location for that reason. It also provided a straight swim to the caves—if the Professor’s information was correct, but she’d yet to go on a raid of his where that hadn’t been the case.
The man might hold back information or twist words, but he’d never lied to her. At least not yet.
Wonder what that first time will be about? Saving your ass, Smite-Williams, or saving mine?
A little recon was in order. Caution always cut down on surprises, and cutting down on surprises tended to cut down on deaths.
Shay pulled a mini-drone from the back of the van and linked the visual feed to her AR goggles. She activated the machine and surveyed the area in the IR and visual bands. No people or surface animals, visible or otherwise, slept or walked anywhere near her location in either band.
“What, no invisible army? I’m almost disappointed.”
She searched with the drone for a few more minutes. She not only sought high-temperature readings indicative of animals or people but also low temperatures that might be associated with ice magic. An additional five-minute sweep confirmed that Shay was alone.
“I didn’t want to deal with that bitch yet anyway,” she grumbled.
The tomb raider brought the drone down behind the truck and lifted her AR goggles. She proceeded to pull a cylindrical aquatic drone out of the back of the van.
The reflected light of the Chicago buildings might be enough to keep the area from being pitch-black, but that light would be worthless once she was a few feet under the water. Shay needed to make sure she knew exactly where she was going before she stepped one inch into the frigid water.
Besides, the way things had turned out for her on some recent raids, she wouldn’t have been surprised if both the Loch Ness Monster or Ogopogo or angry mermaids popped out of the cave to try to eat her.
Such creatures had no reason to be in Lake Michigan, but neither did a strange alien stone. The world didn’t make sense anymore, and the only way to keep her sanity was to accept that magic made cause and effect ambiguous.
Shay slipped the drone into the water and again lowered her AR goggles to watch the feed live. She waited until the machine was twenty feet down before activating its camera.
Its forward lights cut through the darkness as the drone continued to dive. The submersible approached the bottom and skimmed along for several minutes until a jagged opening appeared in the lake floor.
The tomb raider maneuvered the drone toward the rift for a better look. The crevice widened into a silt-lined cave angling down from the initial hole. The level of magic necessary to keep the massive amount of water above from pouring in stunned Shay.
She shook out her head and refocused on the job.
Okay, I’ve confirmed the caves are there and there’re no kraken around, but it’s not like I can send an aquatic drone farther in. Guess it’s time to go in myself.
Shay brought the drone up and stored it in the back of the van before initiating the awkward process of putting on her cold-water diving equipment.
Sometimes she entertained the notion of training Peyton for field work and bringing him along if only to help her gear up in similar situations, like a squire helping his knight put on armor.
The problem was that easy raids with only mild environmental threats had grown increasingly rare compared to those that required gunplay or had extreme physical dangers. If Shay wanted the big money, she needed to take the big risks.
The tomb raider could. She’d trained for it most of her life, given her former profession. She didn’t care how good Peyton might get at making pizza; he’d never have the levels
of combat and physical skills necessary for her to feel comfortable with him watching her back.
Brownstone was one of the few men she’d ever encountered who did, even without his freaky magic amulet.
Wonder if the bounty hunter would come along without a bounty as long as I cut him a percentage?
Shay wasn’t sure. Brownstone acted like he only cared about money at times, but his actions with Alison and his obsession with helping his church proved that the self-interest was more act than reality.
The tomb raider prepped her needle gun. She didn’t anticipate a fight under the water, but she didn’t want to get caught flatfooted if some water witch or angry rusalka decided they wanted to drown her ass.
The drone recon had shown that the caves would be large enough for her to enter even wearing all her diving equipment. She might be tough, but she couldn’t free-dive hundreds of feet.
Shay geared up in her full-suit high-pressure wetsuit and diving equipment. It was expensive as hell, but it also let her surface much faster than more commercially available gear.
She waddled into the water with all the grace of an overweight penguin, taking step after step as the hungry waters of Lake Michigan rose higher on her body. Soon the water swallowed her whole.
Shay activated the lights on her mask and her wrist as she swam toward the cave entrance. Something darted past her and she spun, bringing up the needle gun. It wasn’t a rusalka, Nessie, or a mercenary diver, just a large fish.
Seconds blurred into long minutes as she continued downward, now more attuned to the other inhabitants of the watery depths. She still occasionally swept the area with her lights to ensure only finned animals were in the area.
Shay arrived at the cave. The water rippled across the entrance, but none leaked inside.
She expected to feel some sort of jolt or strange warmth as she passed through the obvious magic of the entrance, but instead, her head passed into the cave without any sensation. Soon her entire body was inside.
The tomb raider stripped off her fins and bulkier gear. The Professor had provided coordinates to narrow down the location of the stone, but he hadn’t been able to get it more specific than that. Time for a little exploration.
Shay double-checked to make sure she still had a few watertight pouches on her diving belt before hoisting the needle gun and moving farther into the cave.
Why can’t people hide their shit above the water?
After fifteen feet or so Shay stopped. She’d had to access the cave via the water, which was held back by magic, but she wasn’t having any trouble breathing. Another spell, perhaps, or some hidden access to the surface. It didn’t matter in the end, but given all her adventures since becoming a tomb raider, it was hard to ignore all the subtle ways magic could influence her missions.
The coordinates pointed her to a cave that narrowed into a separate tunnel, and Shay frowned. The low ceiling necessitated crawling, so she’d need to leave her weapon behind.
Shay shrugged. “Oh, well. Sometimes it’s about having knife fights with alien demons, and sometimes it’s about crawling through mud.”
She dropped to her knees to crawl through the tight passage. A minute or two of careful travel brought her to an underground cavern that dwarfed the cave entrance, let alone the narrow tunnel leading to the cavern.
A small silver box sat near the back of the cavern.
“This is promising. Very promising.”
Shay took slow, measured steps toward the box, still half-expecting an angry attack from some magical assassin or strange creature. The Professor had sworn up and down that the job would be simple, but he and his Light Elf buddy seemed awfully spooked by the situation.
If a man who’d been collecting artifacts for decades and a Light Elf were acting that way, there was no way in hell the artifact wasn’t dangerous itself or being protected by someone or something dangerous.
The tomb raider patted her sheath. She’d not been able to bring her needle gun, but at least she still had one of the adamantine knives. She’d thought about bringing the others, but didn’t want to risk the loss of all three under the cold waters of Lake Michigan should anything go wrong.
Shay’s trip to the box preceded without any attacks, surprises, or anything of note. She let out a sigh of relief. Now, it was time for the next test.
She knelt in front of the box and took several deep breaths as her fingers hovered over the lid.
“One…two…three.”
She raised the lid, and nothing exploded or shocked her. No giant boulders rolled out to crush her. She wasn’t teleported to the World in Between. She didn’t even have to deal with a poison dart.
The stone was inside the box and Shay stared at it, taking in all the fine details.
It was less worn than the one she’d recovered from Mexico, and as in the picture she’d been shown some of the glyphs were the same, but there were also several different ones.
Shay gently lifted the stone and settled it inside a pouch.
So what are you and Correk hiding, Smite-Williams? Is this some secret Oriceran bullshit in the end?
The tomb raider stood and shook her head. She wouldn’t be able to just walk away from this job and be satisfied with her money. Whatever the Professor and the elf were doing might involve her stone.
Selling it to the Professor was one possibility but giving away her potentially historic proof for a little money struck her as pointless.
There also remained the question of whether the stone itself had some sort of magical power. She’d collected her knives and the tachi, but they weren’t enough—not with the types of difficulties she had faced on many of her tomb raids.
If Shay didn’t actively seek gear to protect herself from dangerous magical foes, she’d be dead within the year. Yulia had proven that in Antarctica.
I might not be a witch, but by the time I’m done they’ll all be fucking afraid of me.
She slammed the box closed, and a loud rumble shook the room.
“Oh…shit.”
The cavern continued to shake. Jets of water shot from the wall and rocks fell from the ceiling.
Shay rushed toward the small tunnel. She dropped to her knees and hurried forward. Streams of water gushed from both sides of the tunnel, and sediment poured in from several new holes. When she’d crawled through the tunnel the first time, she’d only spotted a few puddles, now she splashed through several inches of frigid water.
Halfway through the tunnel, the silty water almost reached her chest. Three-quarters of the way through, her shoulders. Her pulse pounded in her ears as she crawled forward as fast as she could manage. The water and silt level kept rising.
Shay pushed forward, keeping her head up. The jagged rocky surface of the top of the tunnel sliced her forehead and blood ran down her face.
Mud and sediment dominated the water now, weighing down her limbs. She fought her way forward, keeping her head up as the water reached her chin.
A few seconds later the water swallowed her. She held her breath and closed her eyes as she struggled on. More sediment dumped into the tunnel, threatening to bury her alive.
Fuck…this…noise.
Shay emerged from the tunnel into the cave entrance. She rolled onto her back and gasped for air before sitting up.
Sand and mud had sealed the tunnel, an invisible wall holding in the water and silt.
“I really have to stop taking jobs that involve deep dives.”
Shay slid the briefcase containing the stone over to the Professor with a smile. “There was a trap, by the way. It wasn’t so simple.”
The elf wasn’t with him this time, and neither was the tension. The rosy-cheeked man who was ready to turn into Father O’Banion after a few more beers had returned.
Smite-Williams took a long draw of his beer. “There’s always something, now isn’t there?”
“You still not gonna tell me what this is all about?”
“If you’re half as clever as I t
hink you are you won’t need me to, Miz Carson.” He winked.
“And Correk?”
“What about Correk?”
“Is he gonna come after me now?”
The Professor barked out a laugh. “And why would he do that?”
“Because I know too much? He had some sort of elven Man-in-Black vibe. I don’t know.” Shay shrugged.
“A lot of people in this world know too much these days.” The Professor clucked his tongue. “The people responsible for holding back the truth of magic were never completely successful anyway. Don’t worry about Correk. I’m sure if you see him again, he’ll have come to help you. If you knew more about him, your opinion might change. He’s a good man.”
“There’s much I don’t know about a lot of the people who try to kill me. A lot of those might be considered good men.”
The Professor scoffed. “Correk’s not going to kill you.”
“Maybe.”
“Paranoia can be useful, Miz Carson, but only to a point.”
She winked. “I’m not dead yet, so it’s been pretty damned useful.”
Shay locked eyes with the Professor, again considering telling him about her stone, but decided against it. If anything, he’d probably already reasoned out that she had a stone and was offering her plausible deniability from Correk and his Elf Mafia buddies or whoever he worked for.
If she admitted to having the stone, he’d probably have to call his Light Elf buddy, and he’d drag her off to whatever passed for an ultramax in Oriceran.
No, some secrets were worth keeping.
The tomb raider slowly stood and shook her head. “Thanks for the money. Except for the whole almost-being-buried-alive thing, it was a pretty easy job.”
“Be well, Miz Carson, and know that every job you do for me does our world a service.”
“Keep paying me and I don’t care.”
A smug smile played across the Professor’s face. “Keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll eventually believe it.”
