He rose from his table and headed to the bar.
“Give me two Irish Stouts.”
Toby, the bartender, laughed. “Now you’re going to start double-fisting it? That’s a lot, even for you.”
Father O’Banion chuckled. “That’s a good idea, lad, but these aren’t for me.”
“Okay, one second.” The bartender poured the beers and set them on the bar.
The older man picked them up and headed straight toward the two men at the table, not even bothering to try and navigate through the dense crowd. In the Leanan Sídhe, no regular customer would be party to spilling one of Father O’Banion’s drinks. In a carefully choreographed dance people cleared out of his way at the last moment, until finally he arrived at the spies’ table with a broad smile on his face.
The men looked up. Irritation and recognition spread on their faces.
“What do you want, old man?”
Father O’Banion put the drinks down. “These are for you, and might I suggest a little reading material?”
“Reading material?”
“Aye, lad. Just look up the local news. King Pyro and James Brownstone. I think you’ll find it most enlightening.”
Without another word, Father O’Banion sauntered toward his own table, not looking back at the men. When he finally took his seat and looked back the men were gone, their beers untouched.
“They didn’t drink their beers? Now that was just wasteful.” He stood again. No reason to let them go to waste.
James slumped against the passenger door, trying to convince himself not to call Alison. Now that they were out of cell range he’d have to use his satellite backup, and he idly wondered how expensive an international satellite call would be.
“I have the money,” he mumbled to himself. “And it’s not that overprotective. It’s a weird-ass magic school. It’d be strange not to be overprotective. What does she know? Shay doesn’t have a kid.”
Not that James technically did either, but he was responsible for one.
A flash in the side mirror caught his attention, and when he glanced at the rearview mirror there was plume of dust in the distance. Getting caught in a dust storm wouldn’t be great for the vehicle, but it’d survive.
James narrowed his eyes. The plume was far too narrow to be a storm.
The bounty hunter hurried out of the car and pulled out a small pair of binoculars. The people with their fancy AR goggles and drones didn’t accept how easily those things could break. A good pair of binoculars would go a lot farther, and couldn’t be taken out by a jammer or EMP.
James lifted the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted them. Two vehicles barreled toward his location, old open-bed trucks filled with men. The angry-looking bandana-wearing men with their AKs and pistols obviously weren’t there for sightseeing. One bastard even held a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
“These guys came to play.” James grinned. “And here I thought I was going to be bored.”
The bounty hunter hopped in the Forerunner and quickly drove behind a nearby rocky outcrop. Leaving it out in the open to get blown to bits was a bad idea. For one thing, Shay would lose her deposit, and he’d probably have to listen to her bitch about it for days.
The dust plume grew closer, and James gave himself a quick pat-down.
“See, Shay?” James mumbled. “You can never be too prepared.”
15
Shay managed to finish her game of ancient deathtrap hopscotch far quicker than she would have ever guessed. Her tech helped; she couldn’t see how someone without her equipment would have been able to avoid the traps. A couple more skeletons entangled with spearheads provided proof of her hypothesis.
Poor sonsabitches. Wonder if they were locals, or some other guys from the admiral’s fleet.
The cave narrowed and split off in two directions. No skeletons or traps were obvious in either, so Shay held her breath and listened. A quiet hum and the faint sound of running water reached her ears from one of the paths and she stalked that way slowly, searching for any sign of traps or angry-Taoist-priest ghosts.
The real trouble was finding the place. I’m already ninety percent to my prize just by being in here and not getting killed by the first trap. I mean, how well could they have fortified this place so far from home?
Shay’s smug satisfaction vanished as her path opened into a large cavern with a huge drop into an inky darkness. The sound of running water had increased, swallowing the earlier hum, so she suspected an underground river lay at the bottom of the cavern.
The barest hints of rotted rope and wood suggested there’d once been a bridge stretching across the cavern to a stalagmite-covered ledge on other side. Maybe if she’d shown up a few centuries earlier, the bridge might have still been around.
How the hell did they even build a bridge in here? It’s not like there were a bunch of trees outside to harvest wood from. Some sort of magic?
Worrying about mysterious feats of construction would have to wait, since the answer wouldn’t help her get to the other side of the cavern. It was too far to risk jumping.
Shay peered into the darkness as her flashlight beam pierced it. “Dammit, why can’t there be a convenient mine cart or giant eagles or something?”
The obstacle was annoying, but not insurmountable.
The field archaeologist sighed and unzipped her backpack. A little feeling around inside netted her a coil of kernmantle rope with a hook already attached. The next couple of minutes passed as she searched for a good place to anchor her hook. Jumping from a ledge without careful planning would just end up with her taking a swim in some pitch-black underground river.
She preferred to aim high rather than going low and climbing up. There was more margin for error with the former than the latter.
Shay considered and discarded the idea that she might be going the wrong way. She saw no reason that someone would build a bridge in a cavern if it led to a dead end, especially when they were not planning for long-term storage of the artifact.
Unless they were trying to trick people like me? Then again, they had the magic and the traps. A misleading bridge seems kind of boring.
Fortune favored Shay, and she selected a good place to aim her hook. Hanging onto one end, she started twirling the rope and attached hook to build up speed, and after a quick release the rope and hook sailed through the air and landed on her rock of choice. The tomb raider pulled on the rope to make sure the hook was secure.
“Nice throw, if I do say so myself.”
A big disadvantage of exploring the cave by herself was that Brownstone wasn’t there to observe her field archaeology excellence or listen to her loudly extol it. He was probably sitting in the car feeling sad about Alison.
For a tough guy, he sure was a softie inside.
Shay tugged on the rope a few more times and then backed up, the other end of the rope securely clutched in her hands. She darted forward and leapt from her side of the precipice, her momentum carrying her forward and her rope preventing gravity from sending her to her death.
Panic replaced the exhilaration of leaping through the darkened cavern when she spotted a thin, almost invisible line stretched across the space in front of her only a second before she hit it. The line snapped with no effort, and she wasn’t surprised when a loud boom shook the cavern a moment later.
“Not good. So not good.”
Shay glanced behind her, her stomach tightening. Only her years of training as a killer before being a tomb raider helped her maintain her calm.
A slender gold and red dragon with fire and smoke shooting behind it zipped past. The creature slammed into the wall on the other side and exploded, and debris showered Shay as she landed on a ledge under her target rock. She clutched the rope tighter, worried that the hook had been knocked loose by the explosion. She really didn’t want to lose the rope.
Her face stinging, Shay blinked as she stared into the darkness. A strangely familiar acrid smell hung in the air.
“What. The. Fuck?”
She stood there for a good thirty seconds trying to process what had just happened, because it looked like she’d hit a tripwire and a small dragon had tried to ambush her, only to explode.
You mad, bro? Just because you didn’t kill me?
Her abrupt laugh echoed through the cavern.
No, not a dragon, but an ancient rocket. She wasn’t sure if the trap had still worked because of luck, good design, magic, or some combination of all three. She kind of doubted gunpowder and explosives would have lasted that long without a little magic, but she wasn’t a chemist. Her expertise with weapons was limited to the pointing, shooting, and stabbing parts.
Shay suspected the trap had originally been designed to kill someone walking along the old bridge, and only the absence of the walkway had saved her from an explosively bad day. For all she knew, an earlier rocket had been responsible for taking the bridge down.
These guys were thorough. I’ve got to give them that.
Her heart still pounding from the addictive mix of excitement and fear, the woman secured the other end of her rope by tying it around a large rock far from the edge of the ledge, just in case of tremors. It’d still be a little bit of a stunt to get back over.
Shay started into a narrow tunnel leading away from the ledge. She began to realize that even if she’d asked Brownstone to come, he might have had issues with the low roof. The guy wasn’t super-tall compared to a lot of men, but he had a few inches on her, and it was already getting tight for her.
Her light highlighted a man’s form at the end of the tunnel. She jerked her gun out of its holster, her heart rate kicking up.
“Freeze, asshole. You don’t have to die here, but I’ve had an annoying last few minutes.”
The gun was returned to its home a few seconds later when the field archaeologist realized she was looking not a human but at a stylized mural of a huge bearded man in armor wielding a bladed polearm, a guandao, which was most likely the Green Dragon Crescent Blade. She’d seen enough representations of Guan Yu to recognize him.
Shay chuckled. “Bet you never thought your weapon would end up so far from home, huh, General? Probably next job, I’ll have to pick up some ancient Aztec weapon from Shanghai.”
She stepped closer to examine the mural. Something seemed slightly off about the color. She lowered her light to point at the floor and realized the image glowed with a soft green light.
“Yeah, that’s not strange at all. Magic painting?”
Shay waited a few seconds for the mural to come to life and attack her, and was pleasantly surprised when it didn’t.
Faint drips of water echoed throughout the area, and the underground chill nipped at her skin.
“Should have brought my own ugly jacket,” Shay muttered. She saluted the mural. “I’ll be off then, General.”
The tunnel continued past the mural, curving into the darkness. The path became even rougher, stalagmites littering the ground and long stalactites threatening her head.
“Ow,” Shay muttered as one scraped the back of her head.
She stopped at the sight of yet another skeleton when the tunnel dead-ended in a chamber that opened up at the top. Now that she’d moved farther away from the cavern with the ledge, the sound of running water had receded and the hum had returned. This chamber seemed to be its source.
Unlike the skeletons she’d seen before this one still had clothes, even if the outfit was covered with dust. A black and gray robe with a golden fringe enshrouded the bones. The skeleton sat in a cross-legged position with its skull facing down.
Shay tilted her head as she moved closer. A barely discernable blue glow surrounded the robe. She suspected it might be related to the concealment barrier, but she was less interested in finding the truth behind the magic than finding the Green Dragon Crescent Blade and getting the hell out of there.
The bodies and traps all suggested the cave was guarding something of importance, rather than just additional directions or a map. She’d love it if the job turned out to be a simple snatch and grab and she didn’t have to go anywhere else.
Shay returned her attention to the skeleton. “You stayed here until you died, huh? I’ll give you credit for dedication.”
She lifted her flashlight. The cave’s ceiling continued off at an angle, and the stalactites were even thicker and denser there. She had no idea how deep underground she was, but she wondered if a few good explosives would reveal sunlight. Absent blowing things up, there was no obvious way to continue or any sign of the Green Dragon Crescent Blade.
“Damn it! Was I wrong after all, or is there something on the body?”
The flashlight’s beam caught a glimmer of something on the cave ceiling, but whatever it was vanished as soon as she concentrated on it.
“Hmmm.”
Shay pulled a small spherical camera drone from a pouch on her belt, set it on the ground, and pulled out her phone. After entering a few commands, four slots opened in the sphere and the rotor extended. The drone lifted off and an image appeared on her phone screen.
The tomb raider didn’t shunt the feed to her goggles. She had something else in mind.
Shay kept glancing between her phone and the ceiling as the tiny drone rose. She guided it toward the location of the vanishing glimmer.
Her video feed revealed a soft green glow that she couldn’t see from where she was. She pulled off her goggles, just in case the light was being filtered somehow, but still couldn’t spot it.
“Okay, so there’s something there.”
Some quick navigation commands pulled the drone back so she could get a wider view of the ceiling.
Shay frowned. “Why are there so many stalactites there?”
She pulled the drone farther back and zoomed out with the camera as well.
“You sons of bitches!” She laughed.
Even though she couldn’t see it with her eyes, the drone’s video feed on the phone clearly depicted two hexagrams carved into the stalactites.
“Didn’t plan on some bitch coming with her fancy flying metal demon, did you? What, did you pull a little geomancy there?”
She examined the hexagrams for a moment. One was the pattern for radiance and the other appeared to be force, but there were outlines for single segments in both, whereas the rest of the segments were filled in and surrounded by thick borders.
Using the drone as a guide, she determined that the remains of the priest lay directly under one empty segment. She took a deep breath and moved directly under the other empty segment.
A warm sensation passed through her body, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
“Yeah, this was a bad idea.” Shay sat down and crossed her legs. “Probably gonna end up rotting here with you, but what now?”
Her research hadn’t given her many clues about the place other than the location.
“Stand…speak, Mandate of Heaven,” Shay murmured, remembering some of the translated words from the front of the cave.
The Mandate of Heaven was the ancient Chinese idea that a proper emperor had the support of the gods and the universe itself.
Mandate of Heaven equals emperor, maybe? Time to stand and speak then.
Shay stood and pulled out her phone. She couldn’t pronounce classical Chinese worth a damn, but she did have an app containing information on the Chinese emperors. She swept her finger to highlight a phrase and then tapped so it’d be read aloud.
“Zhu Di, Yongle Huangdi.” Zhu Di, the Perpetual Happiness Emperor.
The entire cave shook, and the tingle in Shay’s body exploded into an inferno of pain. She cried out and fell to the ground.
Fuck. One final trap, huh? Damn it. Guess I should have brought Brownstone after all.
The agony increased, and she screamed.
Then it was gone.
Shay took several deep breaths, flexing her muscles in her arms and legs. No residual discomfort or pain remained. It was like she hadn
’t been on fire from the inside out seconds before.
She pushed herself up and shook her head. “That sucked.” Her eyes widened when she saw what was now lying directly between her and the skeleton.
A long, curved, bladed polearm lay on the ground. It was clearly a guandao.
An ornately carved golden dragon surrounded the joint where the blade and the pole met, its eyes made from carved jade. Another piece of jade had been inlaid into the end.
Shay crept toward the weapon. She wanted to take the whole damn thing. If Brownstone could get his arsenal through Customs, he should be able to get one stupid ancient magical weapon through too.
There was one minor problem that again made her regret not bringing the bounty hunter. Legends claimed the Green Dragon Crescent Blade was heavy as hell. She was strong, but she wasn’t barbecue-lover strong.
Shay grasped the weapon, and after taking a deep breath, she jerked up with all her might—whereupon she tripped, fell backward, and slammed her head on the ground.
“Dammit!”
It turned out that the legends were wrong. The Green Dragon Crescent Blade weighed almost nothing.
Shay sat up and rubbed her head. “Okay, this works. I can do this.”
A distant crack echoed through the cave system. She frowned, wondering if grabbing the weapon had set off more traps. More cracks and a boom followed.
The noises remained distant, and the cave didn’t shake at all.
Shay sighed when she realized what she was hearing.
“Oh, Brownstone, who are you shooting at now?”
16
The two trucks continued to close on his location, so James needed to formulate a plan other than killing every single motherfucker in sight.
He didn’t know who the guys were yet, and wasting a man without at least having some clue who he was bordered on being rude—especially when the guy might not have a chance against him.
James rubbed his chin. Fuck. Wish I had brought a rifle.
Unfortunately, he didn’t like rifles much. When he hunted a man, he wanted to be able to look the guy in the face before kicking his ass or shooting him. Blasting targets from a distance just wasn’t his style, even if it occasionally made tactical sense. Unfortunately, his lack of sense sometimes got him in trouble in situations where he couldn’t rely on the strength of the necklace and he expected a lot of enemies. Situations like the one in this canyon.
The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Boxed Set One (Books 1-3): Feared By Hell, Rejected By Heaven, Eye For An Eye (The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Boxed Sets) Page 31