by Martha Carr
“True. The artifact I’m interested in is an Ainu sacred carving of a bear. It has come to my attention that it may be at an abandoned Shinto shrine in Hokkaido.”
Shay frowned. “Wait, I thought Shinto wasn’t an Ainu thing?”
“Traditionally, no, but it’s flexibly syncretic belief system. Besides, I don’t know the complete history of the artifact, only that it may be at this shrine. I want it, and as I mentioned in the message, I’m willing to pay handsomely for it.”
“What’s it do?”
The Professor smiled. “It’s a type of magic modulator.”
“Modulator?”
“It allows otherwise incompatible types of magic to be mixed. More importantly, it’s incredibly dangerous in its present state, and I’ll be loaning you a special pouch to contain it. Once you locate it, get it into the pouch as soon as possible.”
“Or what?”
Smite-Williams lifted his hands, made fists, then stretched out all his fingers at once. “Boom. At least if you try to transport it without the pouch for too long a distance. If that energy is released, unusual magic can happen.”
Shay nodded. “Duly noted. Now, who else is coming for it, and do they have magic anti-nuke bags?”
“That’s the question now, isn’t it? At least one other group of less-than-reputable tomb raiders is interested, but I’m more concerned about something else.”
Shay frowned. “Other than the fact it might blow up?”
“Aye. I’ve been trying to track this artifact for some time. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that I’m surprised to see it pop up, as it were, so recently.”
“What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m hiring you to go and find it.”
Shay stared at the Professor for a moment. “I’m surprised you don’t want me to bring Brownstone.”
He shrugged. “Some jobs require a hammer, others require a scalpel. I have the utmost confidence that you’ll be able to handle this without additional aid. This is a situation where I’d prefer less violence.”
“No guarantees.”
The Professor smiled. “Just saying that James has a way of escalating situations.”
“True enough.” Shay nodded. “Okay, then, Professor, I’ll go find you a bear carving.”
13
Shay’s car rumbled along the dirt road. According to the GPS, it would still be about thirty more minutes before she arrived at the temple. She couldn’t complain too much, considering the job didn’t involve her having to go to the middle of Antarctica or swim into a maze of unstable logs.
Her phone rang and she glanced down at the caller ID. Peyton.
“What’s up?” she answered.
“I can barely hear you,” he responded, static crowding the line.
“You’re not so great yourself. Huh, surprised I’m having trouble. I mean, I’m a little off the beaten path, but not that far. I’d have expected a better signal in the satellite mode. Anyway, what’s up, Peyton? Lily okay?”
I’m actually worrying about her. Maybe I should send the kid to the same school as Alison. Would she even go?
“Lily’s fine. She doesn’t want me to tell you that she’s been working out. Ow!”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to rat somebody out while they’re standing next to you.”
“That’s the only righteous way to do it. Ow! Hit me again, you one-armed bandit and I’ll hit you back. I mean it!”
Shay rolled her eyes. “I’m hanging up now.”
“No wait, don’t! I had a reason for calling. A very good one. I figured I should pass something along to you. I was poking around on some dark web forums, and, I, uh…I spotted something nasty.”
Shay laughed. “Hey, everybody has their own fetishes. We shouldn’t judge.” She stopped the car. It was hard enough to hear her assistant over the crap connection without the rumble of the road noise.
Peyton groaned. “Not nasty as in porn.”
“What then?”
“Somebody’s making a big move on Brownstone.”
“Define big.”
“A half-million general bounty available to anyone who kills him. Some sites are mentioning that a million might even be on the table.”
Shay whistled. “Shit, really?”
“Uh-huh. They want him dead in a big way.”
Shay sucked in a breath and slowly let it out. “That’s a lot of money. It’s gonna bring every wannabe out of the shadows, let alone the pros. Fuck, I’d take a whack at him for that much if I was still in the biz.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“I’m in the middle of a raid so I can’t break and run for Brownstone, but the least I can do is let him know what’s coming.”
“Maybe I should.”
“No,” Shay responded. “For now, Brownstone doesn’t need to know all of my business or yours.”
“You mean, don’t tell him about the t-e-e-n-a-g-e-r.”
“I can spell you idiot.”
Shay could hear Lily through the phone.
“Well, you never know if there’s school in underground sewer tunnels.”
“Nuclear escape tunnel, asshole.”
“Shay, I can tell him without mentioning certain details.”
“I’ll handle it…and Peyton? Good job.”
“No problem. Talk to you later.” He disconnected.
Shay sighed. She’d give the bounty hunter a call and then get back to work. He was a big boy who could take care of himself. The man had already killed hundreds of Harriken, after all.
A true killer thought and acted differently. They were way more dangerous. She should know. She used to be one.
She dialed the bounty hunter to deliver the bad news.
Stupid, Brownstone being so cocky. I don’t think he gets that a load of hurt’s coming for him. He should be a little more worried.
The male ego was an impressive thing, both fragile and powerful at the same time. Brownstone seemed to relish the idea someone would be sending hitmen after him.
Shay had thought she’d all but talked herself out of giving a damn, but now she was forced to admit a little concern had crept in.
It wasn’t her problem. She was halfway across the world, and the Professor needed her to be Shay the Tomb Raider, not Shay the Brownstone Babysitter.
She tried to keep reminding herself that the bounty hunter might not have any reason to worry. The man could take a direct shotgun blast with the help of his magical amulet. That meant the average hitman going after him didn’t have a chance.
The issue was the not-so-average hitmen. Witches, wizards, and other creatures might be able to pierce his defenses.
Shay shook her head. She needed to concentrate on the job at hand. Once she finished in Japan, she might consider offering Brownstone help if he wanted it. Maybe.
She frowned at something up ahead and pulled her car to the side of the dirt road.
Fucking perfect. Just what my day needed.
Two black SUVs with tinted windows were parked farther up. Someone had already beat her to the site. A look to her side had her groaning for a different reason.
She liked a good workout, but not in the middle of a job. A massive series of stone steps led up a steep hill to the temple site, flanked by dense trees on both sides. She’d seen the stairs in the satellite image but seeing them in person drove home just how many she would have to climb to get to the summit.
Huh. Gotta respect all the guys who carried up the shit they needed to build the place.
She didn’t spot the torii, the traditional crossbeam Shinto gate, at the top of the stairs.
That surprised her, because she’d examined satellite photos of the area. Although much of the temple structure had caved in, the gate had still been standing in satellite images taken only a few days prior. Maybe the SUV boys’d had something to do with that.
The tomb raider wasn’t about to hike all the
way up the stairs to be ambushed.
It was time for a little drone survey. If the other tomb raiders spotted it and shot it down, at least she’d know where they were.
Before deploying the drone, she headed over to the SUVs and peered inside each. The tinting was light enough that she could tell both were empty.
Shay headed back to her car and pulled out the drone. She placed the machine on the ground, then activated her control app on her phone along with the surveillance feed.
The drone whirred and rose into the sky. She kept it close to the tree line as it followed the path of the hill and stairs. Even if the other tomb raiders spotted the machine, it was better than her stumbling into them and taking some bullets.
She saw debris on the stairs as the drone rose. Pieces of scorched wood. Rocks. Some metal.
“What the fuck?”
Shay stared at the feed, not sure what she was seeing at first when the drone reached the top of the hill. There should have been the remains of an old Shinto temple, but instead, there was only a large crater.
She increased the drone’s altitude. The scorched remains of the base of the torii still stood at the top of the stairs. The wood on the stairs appeared to be pieces that had been blown from the structure.
The massive crater spread across most of the clearing that had once marked the temple area. Trees around the area had been knocked over and were also scorched as if some massive bomb had blasted the area.
Shay sighed and fished out her phone. Under most circumstances she’d never think about contacting a client in the middle of the raid, but this wasn’t most situations and Smite-Williams wasn’t most clients.
“Tell me the good news,” the Professor answered, his voice slurred. It was hard to understand him over the weak connection.
“The other guys got here first, and it’s obvious that they didn’t bring a special bag.”
“Oh…I see. One moment.” The slur in his voice vanished.
Shay continued to stare at the drone feed, marveling at the thoroughness of the destruction. Not a single scrap of the temple remained.
The Professor cleared his throat on the other end. “My information suggests you can still find it.”
“I’m telling you it’s gone. This place is a crater.”
“No, it’s just released some…energy.” The Professor chuckled. “Unfortunately, my information also suggests it’s likely no longer in Japan, but I can’t tell you where it is now.”
“You can’t, or you won’t?”
“I can’t. I want the item in question, so if I had more information I’d give it to you. The fact that it’s already had a little incident will make it harder to track for some time, but fortunately, it also makes it less dangerous and useless for some time. This may be something we have to put on a backburner for a while unless you can find some other clues.”
“Uh, that’s less than helpful.”
“Aye, but you’re a professional, so I’ll leave it to you. I don’t hold this against you. I’ll pay you the rest of your fee when you recover it, and I understand it might take a few more weeks. Right now I have a few dirty limericks to dispense.”
“Priorities.”
“Exactly, Miz Carson.”
He hung up.
So much for a low-key job. Now there was a crater and she needed to find more leads, but at least the Professor was taking it well.
She sighed and navigated the drone back down to her vehicle. It was time to get a little cardio and view the damage directly.
Minutes later the tomb raider crested the hill. The crater was even more magnificent to the naked eye and extended deep into the ground.
Shay retrieved her AR goggles from her backpack and examined the area using several different frequencies, but didn’t find anything unusual. She’d been half-expecting some residual thermal energy in the crater, but it matched the background temperature.
“The artifact is still around? How can he be sure? Nothing could have survived this.”
After a few more minutes of inspecting the crater, Shay made her way back down to the black SUVs. Both were locked.
Shay grabbed a universal key remote from a box in the back of her car. She didn’t have much use for the gadget under normal circumstances, but since her adventure with a damaged car in Russia she’d started to bring it along on raids in case she needed to borrow someone’s vehicle to escape. Soon both vehicles were unlocked.
Shay slipped on some gloves. No reason to leave any fingerprints for the Japanese police.
The vehicles were clean, with stickers indicating they were rentals from a place in Sapporo. There was nothing in the back of either: no weapons, no drones, no equipment.
Shay looked back up the stairs. The poor bastards were dust now. Or were they? The Professor seemed convinced the artifact was still around, but if it’d blown up the other tomb raiders it shouldn’t have been able to go anywhere else.
Unless those fuckers meant to set it off, for some reason.
The sedans didn’t have any dust, leaves, or any other indications they’d been there for any length of time.
Shay checked for nearby cities on her map app. There was a small town about an hour away. It wouldn’t hurt to check.
The tomb raider popped the back hatch of the first SUV and pulled up the back mat covering the spare tire. The tire was absent, and several guns and gadgets lay inside.
She chuckled.
This seems like some shit Brownstone would pull.
Shay preferred her equipment to always be available.
A cell phone lay next to one of the guns and she took it. At least she had a lead if she couldn’t find out anything in town.
She touched the screen, then frowned at the lock screen.
Shay pulled out her phone and dialed Peyton.
“I don’t have anything new about Brownstone,” he answered.
“If I brought you a cell phone could you break into it?”
“Sure. No big deal.”
She could almost hear the grin in his voice.
“Okay, then I’m bringing home a present. Talk to you later.” She hung up.
Maybe she didn’t have the item, but if the other tomb raiders had it the phone would lead her right to them. Even if they’d been vaporized, their friends might have some clues she didn’t.
“Big blue explosion,” the bar owner offered, gesturing with his hands. He rattled off something in Japanese to one of the other customers, and she nodded her head in agreement.
Shay brought up her phone and tapped the translate function. She didn’t need quality for this conversation. “Please repeat that,” she said into the phone.
The phone rattled off her request in Japanese.
The man repeated himself.
“Foreigners came in black cars,” her phone translated. “Then drove up to the old temple. Then a big explosion. We could see it all the way from here.”
“Thanks.”
Shay had asked a half-dozen people if they’d seen anything, but everyone gave her the same basic story. Some non-Japanese men drove up, the temple exploded in a bright blue flash, and no one came back. According to the news, a plane had crashed in the area.
She snorted at the thought. She’d been there a little over an hour before and hadn’t seen any crashed plane. The Japanese government obviously knew a magical explosion had occurred and were covering up the truth. It was funny how even after the truth of Oriceran had come out, so many people still lied about magic.
The job was on hold until she could get the phone to Peyton.
Shay blew out a breath. It wouldn’t hurt to follow up at the rental place in Sapporo and check out the site again. If she couldn’t find anything, she could head back home to help Brownstone out in his war against… Well, probably everybody.
The tomb raider laughed.
Yeah, that is the smart play. Damn, Brownstone, if you weren’t such a badass I wouldn’t even want to help you. Funny how that works.
Shay grumbled as she sat on the edge of the soft hotel bed. There was nothing like traveling halfway around the world only to find your target site was now a huge crater. At least she hadn’t been in the place when it’d become a hole.
Now that the field archaeologist was back in civilization she needed to catch up on her mail and messages, so she pulled out her phone and started skimming the subject lines of her messages. One in particular caught her eye, and she opened it to read the detail.
“Oh, shit,” Shay muttered. “Damn. Guess that explains it.” She immediately dialed Brownstone.
After their brief and unsatisfactory conversation, Shay gritted her teeth and slammed her phone down on the nightstand so hard her fingers hurt. She shook them out and looked at her screen, which now sported a jagged crack
“This might have been a cheap burner phone, Brownstone, but I’m still gonna make you pay for it,” Shay ranted. “All this stupid machismo crap from men and their stubborn asses. Plus… You know what, Brownstone? I’m gonna make you pay for the airline ticket too.
“Damn the man! He needs to get his head in the game and take this threat seriously. And what the hell was up with asking me to take care of Alison?
Shay leaned back in her seat, enjoying the comfort and space that came with first class. A first-class ticket on a supersonic flight wasn’t cheap, but Brownstone would be paying for it eventually, one way or another.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” came a voice over the speaker. “This is Captain Smith. I regret to inform you that we’ll have to take a detour to Seattle. Storm activity over the Pacific is unusually severe, and we’ve received word there may be some sort of magical fluctuations. We’ll land in Seattle and wait a few hours, then continue on to Los Angeles. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.”
She was racing back to Los Angeles to help Brownstone. Any delay meant the chance of him doing something stupid or dying increased.
“Brownstone,” she muttered. “Even trying to come home and save you has to be a pain in the ass.”