“She’s a graverobber who can use a gun,” James joked.
“That or a kickass treasure hunter. I think the politically correct term is ‘tomb raider.’” Shay smirked. “It’s not always graves, you know. But I’m okay around weapons. Not like we live in a safe world.”
“This time your skills will be particularly helpful, Miss Shay,” the Professor said. “And convenient.” He turned toward James. “We have a strong lead on the Rod that suggests it’s buried in a tomb complex in northern Peru. It’s been explored before, but we have reasons—many reasons, actually—to believe the Rod was magically shielded from detection, and there are no active excavations going on due to issues at the site and local rebel activity. Shay will be taking lead on this, and you’ll be support.”
“Unless you have a problem following a woman?” Shay asked, defiance in her eyes.
“Fine by me.” James jotted down a few more notes and looked back up at the woman. The irritation on her face surprised him.
There was just one angle in this that hadn’t been explored to his satisfaction. “That I’m being invited to the party implies this isn’t just about digging up some moldy zombie rod. There’s a bounty involved.”
“Well, yes, James. Some others are interested in the Rod of Supay” Smite-Williams said, his smile faltering for a moment.
“Who?”
“The Brujos Rojos.”
James leaned back and nodded, trying not to let his disgust show. “I thought they got taken out when they tried to assassinate that high-ranking Light Elf during her visit to Colombia last year.”
“Not enough of them were finished off. They’ve been recruiting, and now they’re sniffing around the Rod of Supay. Whatever our various motivations for being interested in this artifact are, none of us wants a group of homicidal warlocks to get their hands on it.”
James had tangled with the Brujos Rojos—the Red Warlocks—a few years before. They had a nasty little habit of kidnapping children from the Happy Magic Land Amusement Park in Anaheim to fuel spells.
They were the kind of men James had no problem destroying.
His hands curled into fists, and he gave the Professor a curt nod. “I’m in.” He frowned as something occurred to him. “On one condition.”
“What is that?” the older man asked, a curious glint in his eye. “Don’t get greedy now, lad. You get to make money and kick some evil ass. Isn’t that enough?”
James snorted. “My dog is missing. I’d like you to look for him while I’m on the job.”
The Professor chuckled. “And here I thought you were going to ask for something much more expensive.” He nodded at Shay. “Well, Miss Carson, it looks like you have support.” He clapped his hands together. “And now, I do believe this is the part of the evening where Father O’Banion comes out to play.”
Shay stretched languidly, her shirt riding up and exposing her toned abdomen for a moment. The peek caught James’ attention, but he returned a second later to writing down a few more notes.
The treasure hunter scowled at him. James shrugged at her.
What was with this woman?
5
The Professor flagged down a waitress to ask for three Guinness Draughts. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that Father O’Banion ordered the drinks. Now that it was drinking time, Smite-Williams was ready to unleash his true drinking persona.
James didn’t mind Father O’Banion most of the time—unless he sang. Then he was fucking insufferable. But he wasn’t singing yet.
Hope still lived.
“Are all those for you?” James asked.
Father O’Banion frowned. “Of course not, lad. We need to toast future mutual and overlapping interests. Unless you’re too good to toast with ol’ Father O’Banion?”
Shay shot James a glance, confusion on her face.
“It’s kind of a drinking thing,” James explained. “Mostly harmless.”
Father O’Banion shook his head. “Not ‘kind of.’ It’s totally a drinking thing, and never harmless.”
He grinned as the waitress returned with the three huge glasses on her tray. She handed one to each person at the table before heading back to the bar.
The older man hefted his glass. “To defeating evil, acquiring knowledge, and making money—all at the same time.”
“Here, here,” Shay said, clinking her glass against his.
James only grunted before offering his glass.
Father O’Banion sucked down a good half of his drink in the blink of an eye. Even James was impressed, and he was used to the man’s antics.
Shay sat quietly, her gaze roaming the bar and taking in every detail. Since James irritated her, from what he could tell, he decided to let her stew for a few minutes until she got some alcohol inside her. A little liquid relaxation never hurt anyone.
Once a more casual atmosphere had fully settled over the trio, James decided to try again with the prickly treasure hunter. He didn’t need to know her well to work with her, but it wouldn’t hurt.
James suspected she wouldn’t want to talk about the finer points of barbeque, let alone the glories of Jessie Rae’s God Sauce.
“So, you been doing field archaeology long?” James sipped some of his Guinness, enjoying the roasted barley flavor.
Shay narrowed her eyes. “Why do you want to know? You think I don’t have what it takes?”
“Play nice, children,” Father O’Banion ordered.
Her aggressive responses no longer surprised James.
“Nah, I know you have what it takes.” He shrugged.
Shay’s kneejerk reaction to almost everything made James doubt that she’d been in a people-oriented job before taking up tomb raiding or graverobbing or whatever she wanted to call it. He resisted smirking at the thought.
The woman’s face twisted in confusion. “You know I have what it takes, Brownstone?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said, last time I checked.”
The corner of Shay’s mouth turned up. “And why are you so sure? You quick to trust, Brownstone? I would have thought a bounty hunter would be more cynical.”
Father O’Banion let out a quiet chuckle at that, but didn’t say anything. He was more interested in downing his Draught than getting in the way of Shay’s verbal claws.
“Oh, I’m cynical as any other idiot out there,” James replied, “but Father O’Banion wouldn’t have recommended you if you weren’t. I trust his judgment. I’ve worked with him a lot and he’s never steered me wrong, which is more than I can say for a lot of people I’ve worked with.”
The good Father finished his drink during this part of the conversation and exhaled loudly. “Aye, lad, but all this work talk is boring.”
“What do you want to talk about, then?”
Father O’Banion tapped the side of his glass. “Let’s sit here and get drunk and tell lies. Or is that tell lies until we’re drunk? Either would be fine. Both are much more fun than talking about who’s a cynical fuck.”
James grinned. “Can’t disagree with that.”
Shay scoffed. “Takes all kinds.”
James nodded. “That it does, but he’s a lot like you.”
“Not complaining too much. He’s getting me this job, but what do you mean?”
“His appearance is deceiving.”
Father O’Banion nodded gravely, a ridiculously serious look now fixed on his face.
Shay’s eyes narrowed and she pursed her lips. “Oh, and you think you know me well enough to say that my appearance is deceiving, Brownstone?”
“Maybe.”
The waitress returned with another Draught for Father O’Banion.
“You’re doing the Lord’s work, miss,” O’Banion offered as the waitress departed.
Silence reigned for an uncomfortably long time after that. James didn’t feel like saying anything else that might piss Shay off, and she seemed more interested in brooding and thinking up reasons to be offended.
Father O
’Banion, of course, focused on the rapid consumption of copious amounts of booze.
Shay took a few more sips of her drink and finally spoke up. “Look, I know what I’m doing by freelancing with my archaeology skills.”
James waved a hand in front of him. “Never said you didn’t.”
“We all need to make our money somehow, and there’s a lot of good money in artifacts. Better I make some money and steer them into someone like Smite-Williams’ hands.”
“Again, not disagreeing,” he replied.
James wondered why the woman was so hell-bent on trying to pick a fight with him. On some other night maybe he wouldn’t have minded, but between having to deal with Zoe and his missing dog, he didn’t need more stress.
“She’s skilled, lad,” Father O’Banion said, his face flushed and puffy. “Very skilled. More skilled than a lot of people with twice her experience. Kind of like you that way.”
Shay nodded. “I’m fucking Lara Croft, just without all the money. Guess I’m doing this shit backward. Not all that interested in talking about my past, though, just in case you’re the curious and nosey sort, Brownstone.”
James set his glass down and nodded. No reason to press her for the moment. He still was earning her trust.
However slowly.
“I can be a curious and nosey sort, but I know when to leave well enough alone.”
Father O’Banion snorted at that. “Some people and organizations may disagree.”
“Yeah, what can I say? Results may vary. And I don’t give a shit about Shay’s past.” James picked his glass back up to take another sip.
The lie would serve well enough. If Shay didn’t want to talk about her past, she probably had a good reason. Maybe darkness and loss, like James’ own. Maybe she just wasn’t proud of the sort of work she’d done in the past.
It didn’t matter. It wasn’t really his business, and James knew all too well how the past could sink its claws into a person and refuse to let go, dragging them down to an abyss of personal suffering.
Father O’Banion stood. “I’ll be right back. Need to make more room.” Whistling, he got up and wandered toward the men’s bathroom.
An awkward silence stretched between Shay and James.
“The past is shit,” he offered.
Shay snickered. “The past is shit?”
“Yeah.” James stared down into the dark liquid half-filling his glass. “That’s what the last twenty years have taught everybody, I figure. If they haven’t learned that lesson, they are dumbasses.”
Shay nodded slowly. “I get it. I mean, we all grew up reading about history and science, and what could happen and couldn’t—and then we find out it’s all bullshit, and that magic is real. In a sense, everything we’ve known…the truths humanity’s known and told each other for thousands of years were all lies.”
“Makes you wonder what that means for the future. There’s still so much we don’t know about Oriceran, and it’s changing everything over here. I see it every day on my job. Fuck, that’s why every country needs bounty hunters like me now.”
James slowly exhaled, lost in the thoughts of the kinds of magic he’d witnessed and used, let alone the dangerous things he had locked up at his house. Minor differences like whether a person had grown up with the internet seemed like nothing compared to whether a person had grown up knowing magic was real. “Take the pyramids, for instance,” he offered. “Big-ass tombs for long-dead pharaohs? Not even fucking close.”
He shrugged. “Well, okay, some were, but most of them were energy machines built by real Atlanteans hell-bent on maintaining power over twenty-fucking-thousand years ago. All that bullshit about how many years mankind has been smart?” He tapped his head. “Makes no damned sense when we have stone villages under the water in the Mediterranean Sea that are a lot older. And that lie was being questioned before the Oricerans showed up. Makes you wonder who was hiding the truth in plain fucking sight for so long, and why.”
“You truly are a world-class cynic.”
“I am,” he agreed.
Shay tapped her fingers against the table. “Who knew?”
“Who knew what?”
“That you actually had something interesting to say, Brownstone. I kind of pegged you just as a give-a-punch-and-take-a-punch guy. That, and a grunter.”
James shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “I’m all that, too.” He grunted.
Shay chuckled.
James almost laughed. They’d managed to have a half-way decent conversation without Shay shooting him a nasty look.
Maybe the job wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Father O’Banion emerged from the bathroom, smiling more widely than before. He walked over to the table just in time for the waitress to deliver him a new Draught.
“Thank you, miss,” he told her, picking up his new glass. He nodded toward the other side of the bar and asked his tablemates, “Someone I knew came in when I was doing my business. Mind if I join them for a bit?”
James shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”
“I don’t care,” Shay offered.
Father O’Banion gave them a little salute. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Once he’d crossed the room, Shay frowned at her empty glass. “So, Smite-Williams gets a new drink automatically, and I don’t? That’s some sexist bullshit.”
This time James did laugh. “I think it’s more that he practically lives here, and they know to keep them coming.
“Maybe,” Shay grumbled.
“You really think the waitress is discriminating against you?”
“I don’t know.” Shay pushed off the table to stand. “I’m gonna go get a drink. Be right back.”
Shay forced a smile onto her face as she walked away from the table. She’d seen Brownstone checking her out, but the guy kept acting like he didn’t care. Brownstone did care. He had to. All men cared about hot women. They couldn’t help it. That was the way they were wired. That was how most men were, really—a dick tangentially connected to a pair of eyes, totally bypassing the brain.
Shay wasn’t into pretending she wasn’t hot as fucking sin.
Sometimes that could be an advantage when trying to manipulate men, but it didn’t mean she had to like it when men leered at her. She wasn’t a fucking piece of meat to sate their damned hunger.
Brownstone was no different. Just because he could play it cool didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking about her. She’d prove it yet.
Her pace slowed at a sudden thought. Unless he was gay.
Shay tossed the possibility around in her head. That would explain why he wasn’t drooling over her. The old man was one thing, but Brownstone was close to her age. It just didn’t make sense otherwise.
She nodded to herself, satisfied that she now had a good initial hypothesis about what made James Brownstone tick.
Poor guy, they were in the wrong kind of bar for him. Maybe she was getting ahead of herself, but she liked the idea, the more she thought about it.
A couple of drunk yahoos in suits eyed her from a table, their gazes roaming up and down her body and lingering on all the best places.
Fuckers. Her body was all they saw, and all they cared about.
One of the suits decided to get brave. Stupid, but brave. He reached for her ass.
Shay snapped out with a lightning-fast kick. The other man didn’t even have time to register what was going before his grabby-hands friend flew to the ground, head smashing against the tile. His wooden chair clattered against the floor.
Every conversation in the bar stopped, and every patron looked her way.
The suit yahoo moaned and held his head. His friend rushed out of his chair and crouched beside him.
The angry woman lowered her leg. “Don’t grab my ass and you won’t get kicked. Pretty simple, asshole.”
The moaner’s friend helped lift him, and they fled out the door into the night.
What a bunch of chickenshits. Not that Shay was
looking for a barroom brawl. Not that she wasn’t looking for one, either.
Shay sauntered to the bar, daring anyone to say shit about what she’d just done. “I can’t believe how crap the service is here if you’re a woman,” she muttered under her breath.
“Was that really necessary?” the bartender asked.
“’Necessary’ is a relative thing. And I bet you he doesn’t grab some woman’s ass any time soon.”
The bartender nodded. “Can’t say you’re wrong there.”
Shay pinned the bartender with her glare. “Need a refill on my Draught.”
The beer wasn’t her favorite, but she liked the buzz settling into her head, so she might as well continue with what was working.
The bartender poured her a new glass.
“Thanks.” She grabbed it and headed back to her table.
Light conversation had picked up around the bar again. Shay snickered, wondering if someone getting their ass kicked was a common occurrence at the Leanan Sídhe. She’d been told about some dog that drank from a bottle, but he wasn’t there that night. That would have been a sight.
Brownstone watched her, but held no annoyance in his eyes. If anything, Shay would have said he looked amused.
Shay dropped back into her seat, setting her glass in front of her. “Got something to say?”
“Nope.”
“Is that gonna be a problem for you or Smite-Williams?”
James laughed. “You’ll have to kick a lot more ass before you catch up to the number of people he’s beat up in this bar.”
Shay grinned at that. She was liking the old drunk more and more.
Something about the situation still bothered her, though, and it took a few more seconds of thinking to figure it out.
She’d appreciated that Brownstone hadn’t jumped up to defend her, since it meant he respected her skills. She might need his help against some kid-snatching warlocks in Peru, but a few idiots in a bar were fine.
At the same time, Shay didn’t like the idea the guy hadn’t at least tried to be a gentleman.
“You let guys grab women’s asses in here, Brownstone?”
Feared By Hell: The Revelations of Oriceran (The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Book 1) Page 5