“I’m from Spain. I immigrated here about eight years ago,” Raul called, taking the opportunity to squeeze my hand as he leaned close to me and whispered in my ear. “Don’t mind Morris. He’s always a little fidgety.”
“He would likely be in a better mood if you hadn’t locked him underneath a jeep,” I replied as Raul led me forward like it was totally natural to be walking through Crete holding hands at seven in the morning.
“There is that,” he replied, pulling me toward a bakery with things that looked delicious. “Want something?”
I nodded, but I needn’t have bothered because he was already ordering. A moment later, a lady with short gray hair and a rather pudgy disposition handed me some kind of weird coffee drink and a flaky pastry I’d never seen before.
“What is it?” I asked, but no one responded because Raul was paying, and Morris was standing outside the door with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at me like I was some kind of traitor. I smiled at him and bit my pastry, chewing in his general direction. It tasted like honey and nuts, and surprisingly, neither of those things at the same time.
I swallowed and took a sip of the coffee. It was way stronger than I’d expected. I picked it up, looking at it, and as I did so, the lady across the counter snatched it out of my hand, fixing me with an old Greek lady stare.
“You have to mix it or it won’t blend!” she growled, thrusting the straw up and down into the mixture like she was churning butter. The two distinct layers began to mix as she shook it furiously before handing it back to me, froth bubbling out the hole in the top. “Otherwise, it will be only milk and no coffee!”
“Uh… thanks,” I said, taking the drink from her and rushing out of the shop, cheeks on fire. Morris grabbed my wrist as I exited and pulled me next to a small table outside. He pulled my face close to his own.
“We need to ditch Raul. He’s bad news,” Morris whispered, fixing me with a no-nonsense stare.
“We’re going after a guy who took out an agency base with only his girlfriend for backup. How much worse can Raul really be?” I asked, glancing in the shop where Raul was mixing his own coffee and chatting with the old lady.
“Way worse,” Morris said, sneaking a look at Raul before leaping to his feet. He dragged me down the alley, leaving Raul alone inside the shop. “You don’t even understand what’s going on.”
“Um… the drug dealer is taking us to meet his brother who I am coincidently trying to find?” I offered, trying to decide whether or not I was going to continue letting him pull me along.
“I know where Bang is,” Morris replied, staring at me a little too hard before wiping his face with one hand. “I’ll take you there now.”
“Well, why didn’t you say that earlier?” I growled, finishing my coffee and looking around for somewhere to throw the plastic cup. I was immediately surprised at how few trash receptacles there were. I stared at the ground for a moment, wondering how I felt about littering before sighing and holding onto the cup. Shoot someone in the face with a gun and I was fine but tossing trash on the ground? No can do. “Let’s go get him.”
“It’s not going to be that easy… You can’t just kill Bang” Morris exclaimed, exasperation filling his voice. “Or have you forgotten the purpose of the mission?”
“Have I forgotten I’m supposed to find the director before all the power goes out back at base and my father dies? No, I haven’t,” I snapped because I’d been trying to ignore it for the last couple hours. Between getting shot at by Special Forces soldiers and drug dealers, I wasn’t exactly anticipating a Kung Fu monkey knife fight with Flash and Bang. Why? Because I still wasn’t sure I would win.
Those two had already managed to infiltrate an agency base and not only leave it in a pile of rubble but make off with the director of the damn thing like they were stealing candy from a baby. It would be silly to think I could walk in and superspy them to death. Hell, I couldn’t even take on Chuck given normal circumstances, and he didn’t actually want to kill me…
But, as much as I hated to admit it, Morris had a point. We were going to go rough up Flash and Bang, and there was no way Raul was going to help us do that. Well, not unless he was the world’s worst brother. Truthfully, I wasn’t even quite sure why Raul was helping us at all. His bit about thanking me for saving his life seemed silly at best… No, his proper response should have been to put a bullet into my brain, not bring me to Crete on his own personal boat… Something strange was definitely going on, I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
I sighed, letting out my breath slowly. “Okay, Morris. Let’s go beat up an international mercenary, assuming he is actually on Crete.”
Morris looked at me for a long moment before nodding. Then he turned and walked straight into a shoe store with cute little sandals in the window. I lamented not having them as he dragged me past a lady who didn’t even look up from her magazine. Then again, I guess it was for the best because I was pretty sure those flimsy leather straps were not going to wrap around my cankles. The ensuing disappointment was best avoided. Then my boots morphed into an exact replica of those sandals. And they looked awesome.
He pushed open a gray door in the back that said ‘Employee’s Only’ in English and another language I assumed was Greek and pulled me inside. The room beyond looked like it was made of solid steel and immediately gave me that, ‘I was made by the agency’ vibe. I wasn’t quite sure why all of their facilities seemed to follow the sterile steel design, but it was what it was.
“So, what’s the big plan?” I asked just before we were launched upward so quickly my organs were sucked into my toes. I grabbed onto Morris to keep from being crushed to the floor under the sudden gravity. Evidently, he’d been ready for it because he was holding onto a steel beam extending from the roof of the compartment the length of the room. Even still, the look on his face told me he wasn’t having a lot of fun either.
My empty coffee cup slipped from my hand and smacked the floor with a thwap as the room lurched to a stop. It was so sudden, my feet left the ground enough for it to nearly give me a heart attack.
“What the hell was that?” I squealed, glaring at Morris hard enough to make him wince, although that may have been from the death grip I had on his arm. I released him and put my hands on my hips.
He licked his lips and sighed. “You haven’t seen anything yet.” He pushed his thumb into the wall. It actually depressed beneath his touch, sliding down to reveal a panel with all sorts of neon colored lights. His fingers flew across it, no doubt imputing some type of identification code.
The steel walls around us vanished. I wasn’t sure if they were really gone or had merely turned transparent, but I could see outward in every direction. Crete spread out beneath us like a jewel of modern civilization built atop ancient ruins as we hung there in midair. The whirring of chopper blades overhead filled my ears, and I looked up to see exactly that above the room. I couldn’t quite tell how they were attached since the propeller appeared to be sitting in midair, but something told me it was an optical illusion.
We jetted forward so quickly, I lost my balance and fell backward, sliding across the clear floor until my back touched something that stopped me. I presumed it was a wall, but when I looked, it sure seemed like I was leaning on air. Solid air, sure, but air nonetheless. I nearly screamed. But I didn’t because I was a fearless superspy…
“What is this?” I asked Morris who wasn’t even looking at me as we hurtled off into the distance.
“Ever seen Willy Wonka?” he asked, glancing at me over the shoulder and smiling at me. “This is like that, but I have more buttons.”
“And let me guess, we’re going to meet Flash and Bang in their chocolate factory?” I said, getting to my feet and barely resisting the urge to slam Morris’s stupid face into the nonexistent wall.
“No, we’re heading to the ruins of Knossos. You know, where the palace of the Minoans is.” He shrugged. “It’s where the entrance to Bang’s
secret lair is located.”
“He’s located in some ruins?” I arched an eyebrow at him in disbelief.
“Not just any ruins. He’s beneath them, in the labyrinth.” Morris smirked. “The rumors of that being myth were something he helped perpetrate. Rest assured, the labyrinth exists. If you head down into the center, there’s a trapdoor that leads into them.”
“Is the Minotaur real too?” I asked because I couldn’t help myself. I mean I was in Greece going to the labyrinth. The Minotaur being real wouldn’t exactly shock me at this point. Then again…
“No,” he said with a sigh. “Although I wish he was. Then we could just wait for him to eat Bang.”
“So why does Bang have a secret base beneath a cultural landmark?” I shook my head. “That seems a little farfetched.”
“He actually owns the ruins through a series of back channels. Who do you think funds the digs now? The government? Ha. They’re broke.” Morris chuckled. “I’d be surprised if they had two euros to rub together.”
“Still…” I murmured.
“No one is going to blow up a cultural landmark, Abby.” He paused and stared at me. “Well, most people wouldn’t.” He looked pointedly at me. “Some do it on purpose, but I don’t think they count. Anyone who purposely blows up thousands of years of history is a special kind of crazy, no matter the reason. ”
I sighed and looked away from him. Evidently, being away from Raul the Spanish drug dealing Greek was just the thing to get Morris’s spirits up. I wasn’t sure I liked the change.
Instead of rising to his bait, I sat down and watched the countryside roll by because it wasn’t like I’d ever had a helicopter ride over Crete before. It was strangely pretty from up here, though the island wasn’t all beachy like I’d expected islands to be. Still, no one was shooting at me so I was going to take a minute and relax because when this ride was over, I was going to confront a dangerous mercenary on his home turf. Maybe I could insult his mother while I was at it, you know, for effect.
13
We had walked up to the ruins because our brief flyover had revealed one teensy weensy little problem. The goddamn place was crawling with machinegun toting wackos who probably wanted to blast me into tiny pieces or at the very least, riddle me with bullets. By we, I meant me. Morris was hanging back for reasons he hadn’t quite explained although I was pretty sure it was mostly because he was a huge coward. I didn’t have any proof of this per se, but he definitely gave me that vibe.
I snarled to myself as I recalled his stupid voice. “I’m not a field agent,” he’d said. The smugness in his voice had made me want to jam my hand down his throat and rip out his still beating heart. I hadn’t because I’m not that kind of girl, but for just that one tiny moment, I wanted to be.
I shook away the thought as I stared through the leaves of a rather large tree overhanging the chain link fence around the ruins. It didn’t exactly seem like the most secure place, but I think Morris may have had a point. No one was going to attack the labyrinth… well, no one but me. Apparently, attacking famous landmarks was in my genes. Woo hoo.
As the closest guard neared my position, I shut my eyes and counted to ten, hoping it would make my heart stop hammering in my chest. Even though I was a badass who had taken on a tank singlehandedly, I still wasn’t used to being a badass. Maybe that would change one day, but today wasn’t it. I was nothing but a tangle of nerves inside.
My eyes snapped open as the guard passed under me. I dropped silently from the tree, allowing my mind to slip into that place it did when I let my skills take over. My thighs slid onto the man’s shoulders as I squeezed as hard as I could, cutting off his air supply with my legs. He crumpled to the ground beneath our impact, and I held him against the stone until he stopped moving. I stood, glanced around to make sure no one had seen us. Confident no one had, I relieved him of his weapon before dragging him over to a bench and kicking him beneath it.
It wasn’t ideal, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t matter in a few minutes anyway. I made my way up the corridor where ships used to come up for tax collection because taxes existed even in one of the world’s oldest civilizations. Thankfully, no one saw me as I reached the central corridor and leaned over the balcony. The tunnel to the labyrinth was supposed to be in the queen’s room, which was down like three flights of stairs. Big. Open. Stairs.
I cursed under my breath as I swung my legs over the edge, attaching my grappling hook to the rock and hoping it wouldn’t crumble, let myself go. I zipped downward, thankful I didn’t have to spend much time in the open, and also that there weren’t as many guards as I’d initially expected. Then again, it was a national landmark, how many gun-wielding whackos could reasonably be stationed out front?
My feet touched down, and I unhooked the grappling hook from the loop on my belt before letting go of it. The cord shot up into the air before disappearing from view as I tossed a look to my right and left. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I made my way inside, hoping there wouldn’t be any earthquakes because I was pretty sure if there were some, I’d be trapped beneath a billion tons of stone. That didn’t exactly seem like it would be a fun time.
It took me only a few moments to find the spot with the trapdoor. It was situated between two statues of creatures that looked like wingless griffins, which seemed sad to me. In the stories I’d read back in school, griffins were supposed to fly, not be grounded. Then again, it wasn’t like they were real.
“What are you doing here?” asked a voice from behind me and a flashlight beam must have been flashed at me because I saw my outline lit up in the shadows in front of me. “We’re not open yet.”
“Oh, my bad,” I said in my best stupid girl voice, which admittedly wasn’t that much different from my normal voice. “I thought you were open. The guy at the gate let me in.”
“Turn around,” the guy commanded. The sound of his boots on the stone filled my ears as he came closer.
I spun, using one hand to shield my eyes from his flashlight so I wouldn’t go blind while flinging my machine gun underhand at him. It struck him in the arms as he tried to cover up, and I took that moment to leap across the space between us. My heels smacked into his knees with a crunch that made me feel bad for him as I grabbed his shirt by the collar and drove my forehead into his nose. The sound of breaking bone filled my ears as he stumbled backward onto the rock.
He was dressed in khaki pants and a blue polo that said “expedition tours” on it and a sinking feeling filled my gut as the possibility I’d just horrible maimed some normal guy filled my brain. No… no, surely he was just in disguise. Still, as I frisked his unconscious body, I found nothing that let me believe he was, you know, a bad guy.
I could almost hear the ghost of the first man I’d killed whispering in my ear, telling me how horrible I was, but instead of giving in to it, I opted to compartmentalize. If Raul could do it, so could I. Besides, I needed to find Bang’s hideout, and either way, this guy was in my way, right? Right?
I swallowed and slowly backed up. I must have taken more steps than I realized because the next thing I knew, my shoulder blades were touching the cold stone. I sighed, resting my hands on the griffins though I didn’t know why and felt the sudden urge to explain myself to them.
“I’ll send him some flowers,” I whispered like it would make any difference and forced myself to turn away from the downed tour guide. I knelt down next to the trapdoor and slipped my knife under the crack on the left like Morris had told me about. There was a soft click, and the door slid open to reveal some rickety stone stairs with all sorts of plants clinging to them. The air coming from within smelled of rot and mustiness. It made me think it hadn’t been opened in years, which was strange. This should have been a well-used passageway if it was the only entrance to Bang’s secret underground lair, but it sure didn’t seem that way.
I turned and grabbed the flashlight from the fallen guide along with my stolen machinegun and went back toward the passage
. The light beam illuminated the stairs, which made them seem, if anything, less inviting. I shivered, trying to ignore the spiders’ webs clinging to practically every surface and put my right foot on the first step, testing its weight.
When I didn’t immediately fall to my doom, I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. Then I made my way down. When I was about fifteen feet below the surface of the earth, the trapdoor overhead slid shut with a loud wham that made me jump. I spun, playing my flashlight across the now closed trapdoor and resisted the urge to cry. Barely.
“It’s okay,” I murmured to myself. “I mean I’m only trapped beneath a three thousand-year-old stone tomb heading into the labyrinth to confront a psycho mercenary. You know, assuming everything I’ve been told is on the up and up.”
I gritted my teeth together and slowly turned back around and continued my journey. Part of me was worried someone might see my flashlight and shoot me or worse, but I was hoping my suit would be able to ward off such an attack. It hadn’t failed me yet, anyway.
By the time, I reached the landing, my legs were throbbing from exertion, and I was pretty sure I had blisters on my feet the size of France, despite my boots being rather comfortable. I shoved down the pain, somewhat surprised I could even do it because I was a wimp at heart.
Corridors split off in every direction, and as far as I could tell, it looked like no one had been down here, well, ever. Heart hammering in my chest, I glanced back at the stairs, suddenly wishing I had an unusually large ball of twine. I lamented it only for a few minutes, I swear. Then I made my way forward looking for a footprint or really anything that could tell me where to go. I wasn’t quite sure how much truth there was to the minotaur story, but I was reasonably sure getting lost in a huge underground maze would likely turn out horrible.
“I probably should have stayed with Raul,” I grumbled, kneeling down and studying the ground. No sooner had I done so when I got the sense someone was watching me. I whirled around but saw no one.
Magic for Hire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Found Magic Book 3) Page 8
